Did You Know This About Our Priests?

Today I am going to tell it like it is about our priests, from the one who lives in the poorest municipality in our country to the one who holds the highest post in the Church hierarchy.

Having come to know more than two hundred Catholic priests through nearly thirty years of work, from every charism and in every region of Venezuela, is what leads me today to say things that nobody knows (or at least that nobody says) in the media.

For example, a few weeks ago we said goodbye to a priest of nearly sixty who was being transferred to the poorest neighborhood in New York. His luggage: four books (the Bible, his missal and two others), a few clothes, a crucifix, a rosary and Nothing Else! At fifty-something, this priest has to start from zero, in a place with extreme needs. And he was happy with the new mission God had entrusted to him through his superiors. And that, ladies and gentlemen, happens every day all over the world with priests: the only thing they can always count on, in the house where they are passing through, is a suitcase. As simple as that!

As for their daily life: they get up very early to pray and celebrate Mass; they have breakfast, and then the race against the clock begins, to administer the sacraments to their faithful; bring Communion to the sick; deal with their parish’s urgent needs; prepare godparents and parents for baptisms, children for First Communion, young people for Confirmation, engaged couples for marriage. And many nights they have to go out to bring the Anointing of the Sick to someone gravely ill.

That is without even mentioning the priests who work in the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods of the country, attending to extreme needs. Others work tirelessly in wonderful schools where many people want to enroll their children. And then there are those who work like ants in hospitals, military barracks and our dreaded prisons.

A prison chaplain, who died recently of a very bad flu, was once hit by a bullet in one of those jails where he gave himself completely to the very end.

I smile (so as not to cry) when people talk about the material wealth of the Church and its priests. Just look at the physical condition of most parishes, not to mention the many other needs no one sees.

And the priests who live in churches that look better “from the outside” contribute what is collected in their parish to help the neediest priests.

The same goes for the higher hierarchy. Everything they use (house, furniture, vehicles and so on) does not belong to them, and is the most basic you would find in any simple home. Their work is exhausting, since the number of people in their flock is immense, and they face hundreds of problems every day, on top of their administrative tasks and their enormous spiritual work.

And let’s not even speak of what our priests have had to live through and suffer in the crisis we have been enduring for years. They suffer hunger in their own flesh (I know for a fact that there are priests who go without eating so they can give their food to someone needier in their parish). And the same goes for medicines, or anything else their faithful need.

Today I have described for you, only in passing (because I could spend hours giving you examples with first and last names, but I know they wouldn’t like that at all), what the life of a Venezuelan priest is like.

Oh! And that is not counting that they always receive, in great silence and humility, the attacks in which they are irresponsibly lumped together whenever someone’s personal problem comes up, or worldwide scandals that have been deplorable but should not be used to generalize.

And to finish, I will close with something a priest told me (one with a very peculiar personality) when he found out I was writing about them: “Tell your readers to pray hard for us and to correct us, lovingly (that part is mine), whenever they see us do something wrong; and if they think it necessary, to speak with our bishop.”

And always remember that they have left EVERYTHING to give their whole lives to God and to their faithful. That is what you perhaps didn’t know about our priests.

I take this opportunity to say to all of them: A THOUSAND THANKS.