Dermot - Fr. Fred

Fr. Fred

"…The steward was shutting the door to the plane and, finally, I felt some relief. I was being deported from Peru. Then, the door opened and in popped Monseñor Luis Bambarén, the Auxiliary Bishop of Lima. He looked into the cabin to make sure I hadn´t been kidnapped and then secretly taken off the plane. In those days, you know, they were ´disappearing´ many people in Peru…"

It´s about 11am on a Sunday morning. I am gazing out over the Pacific Ocean, relaxing at the Jesuits´ beach house, about a thirty-minute drive from Tacna. I have the 85-year-old Fr. Fred Green, SJ, right where I want him: he is comfortably lounging in his favorite chair, relating another story from his unbelievable past.

Before me sits the legend of Tacna: the founder of two of its most prestigious schools, the builder of whole communities for the poor, the former-World-War-II-bomber-pilot-turned-priest, the Hawaiian-born surfer who has dedicated his life to a dusty Peruvian border town, the near saint completing fifty years in the priesthood.

In Tacna, the name "Padre Fred" is gold: he is a humble super-star, as unassuming as he is effective in the good works he directs. There are teachers at Fred´s schools who say they pass up better pay in other areas only out of gratitude to the man who inspired them to lead in the classroom. As Jesuit Volunteers, if we encounter problems at the border crossing to Chile, we are instructed to drop Fred´s name, as many of the guards are Fred´s former pupils. I know at least three Peruvians who bear the very un-Peruvian first name, "Fred," in honor of this extraordinary gringo.

I will even concede an almost selfish desire for one-on-one time with Fred, and so I was elated to accompany him to the Jesuit beach house, a refuge where Fred has spent almost every Sunday since before most who are reading this email were even born.

Alone with Tacna´s Superman in his own Fortress of Solitude, I have an insatiable desire to know all about Fred`s past. The problem is that Fred is too coy to reveal his cards so quickly: truly, this octogenarian Jesuit possesses a reticent dignity emblematic of America´s "greatest generation." I know his eyes have seen the horrors of war, the injustice of abject poverty, and the triumph of steadfast prudence against the caprice of Latin American despots. I want to learn about all that Fred has experienced, but realize the man possesses an inherent humility—characteristic of so many born in the 1920s—that prevents him from sharing too much of the grandeur of his past.

To get this deportation story out of Fred required a good fifteen minutes of digging. I knew that he had outlasted three Peruvian dictators and that he had had a close encounter with one of them. Now, Fred is relating how, in 1971, he fought on behalf of his teachers at Colegio Cristo Rey for higher wages and how this fight almost cost some of his motley crew their lives.

All the trouble started with an open letter to the Peruvian military junta. In 1971, with Peru in the hands of the tyrannical and pseudo-socialist General Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado, all available funds were being directed toward the military, at the expense of other vital services, such as education. Fred`s teachers saw their purchasing power shrink mightily, just as Peruvian army bureaucrats saw their salaries rise.

The teachers asked Fred to take a position on the matter and so Fred wrote an open letter to Velasco, noting the discrepancies in salaries and suggesting that the army chiefs take a reduction in pay, to free up more funds for the teachers and to show solidarity with their "comrade" teachers who played an equally important part in Velasco`s revolution.

The response to the letter was swift. Within a few days, it was published in Tacna´s daily newspapers and, within a week, in dailies in the large, southern Peruvian city of Arequipa. Shortly after, unionized teachers in Lima were making hundreds of copies of the letter and using it as a rallying call for a national strike.

With armies of teachers striking and thousands of ordinary citizens attending rallies against the government, Velasco was forced to acquiesce to the teachers' demands or face the possibility of a coup.

He increased the teachers` salaries and even paid them for the days they were on strike. The teachers could claim victory, in part thanks to the catalyzing effect of Fred`s letter.

But, now, Velasco wanted revenge. Convinced that Fred was a CIA operative bent on overthrowing his government, Velasco sent his agents to Tacna and to Colegio Cristo Rey, both to observe this troublesome gringo and to arrest some of his teachers. In a calculated operation, two of Fred`s teachers were "disappeared" to the Peruvian jungle and held there as political prisoners.

Thanks to Fred`s quick thinking, however, more teachers were not captured. Fr. Fred even surreptitiously celebrated a wedding for one profesora in her home and then spirited the new couple away to the Jesuit beach house for their necessarily secluded "honeymoon," in a grand scheme to evade Velasco`s spies. In the end, Fred was able to outfox Velasco: he stayed in Peru and his teachers—after a period of detention—were able to return unperturbed to their classrooms.

As Fred winds down his story, I am once again aware of the immense privilege to be able to spend time with a man who inspires me at times to consider a vocation to the priesthood. And the cause today seems all the more urgent. Fred is the second oldest Jesuit in Peru, yet the rest are not far behind. The Society of Jesus is aging fast and is constantly challenged to support works like the ones Fred started, with an ever-dwindling number of religious. Indeed, meeting Fred at the end of his life, I encounter a humble warrior readying himself for one last fight. Fr. Fred has parried the blows of Japanese fighter pilots, Latin American dictators, and Tacna´s petty bureaucrats; yet now he faces a much more indefatigable foe: his own mortality.

This fight against time is most apparent at Colegio Miguel Pro, a second school Fred founded in 1992, where three of my fellow Jesuit volunteers currently work. Unfortunately, this school is still more dependent on money that Fr. Fred raises on yearly trips to the US than on donations from other sustainable forms of funding.

Amazingly, Fred is still able to find enough money to allow Miguel Pro to offer a well-rounded education (he is able to put one student through the school for $129 a year, despite the falling value of the dollar and rising food costs). The problem becomes what happens when Fr. Fred is unable to keep up with the exigencies of exhaustive fundraising trips.

What will happen to Miguel Pro when Fred dies? Is it our job as volunteers to continue the financing of his good work? Would it be better if Miguel Pro were administered by the Peruvian government? Is it good that Fred´s schools were/are dependant on foreign financing?

Is JVI contributing to an unhealthy dependency on the "West" through our presence at these schools?

These are real questions that Fred and my community-mates tackle on a daily basis. You can only imagine the stresses that build from the uncertainties raised about Miguel Pro´s future. Moreover, as I have mentioned previously, when confronting such daunting challenges, the response can be fear-driven inertia: you don´t know how to deal with the problem so your response is slow or absent.

Here at the beach, though, soaking in the sum of Fred`s life experiences, the focus is not on these elephants in the room. For better or worse, I have stolen a moment to learn of Fred`s past. The fight will continue tomorrow. For now, the two of us sit back, take a break from the stresses of Tacna, and look out over the Pacific blue.