50th anniversary of Venezuela mission opportunity for gratitude, hope

For many Twin Cities Catholics, “Father Greg Schaffer” has become synonymous with the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ mission in Venezuela. And not unreasonably so.

The St. Paul native, who serves as pastor of the mission parish of Jesucristo Resucitado, has been in Ciudad Guayana for more than 20 years, the longest tenure of any archdiocesan priest who’s had the assignment. During that time, he’s forged strong relationships between Minnesotans and the Venezuelan people he serves, whether through organizing intercultural trips between the two locales, or by actively inviting archdiocesan laypeople to support the many initiatives undertaken at the mission.

But every time he steps out on the street outside the parish, Father Schaffer is reminded of his place in a much broader legacy. There, in a colorful mural emblazoned with the title, “Misioneros de San Pablo,” the painted likenesses of many of the 22 missionary priests who have served over the course of the mission’s 50-year history smile back.

“It’s really unique to be a part of that,” said Father Schaffer, referring to the archdiocese’s mission presence, which began in December 1970. He is currently joined at the parish by Father Dennis Dempsey, who previously served the mission for five years in the 1990s. “The people here still remember the men that came before with such fondness and real sincere love for them.”

Although plans to celebrate the 50^th anniversary have been postponed due to COVID-19, Father Schaffer and others who have contributed are taking the occasion to look back gratefully upon a vibrant and varied history.

According to Deacon Mickey Friesen, who directs the Center for Mission in the archdiocese, it’s also a chance to reflect upon the spirit that’s animated the mission throughout its distinct chapters and phases. Identifying the beating heart of the mission, he hopes, will help inform its activity going forward into a future that — amid a political crisis in Venezuela and a declining number of available priests in Minnesota — will likely look different than its past.

“We have a calling to be there,” Deacon Friesen said of this common element. “And this is a part of who we are as a diocese, to be serving in mission there.”

Becoming a ‘mission-sending archdiocese’

Although the archdiocese’s Venezuelan mission wasn’t officially established until 1970, its genesis can be traced back at least 15 years earlier.

In 1955, Pope Pius XII promulgated “Ad Ecclesium Christi,” an apostolic letter urging Catholics in Europe and North America to assist the Church in the southern hemisphere. Over a quarter of the world’s Catholics lived in Latin America at the time, but they lagged behind their northern counterparts not only in terms of material wealth, but also in the number of ordained ministers.

The urgings of subsequent papacies, coupled with the missionary spirit of the 1960s, contributed to the establishment of a multitude of Latin American missions operated by North American dioceses and religious orders. As part of what became known as the “Twentieth Century Crusade,” some U.S dioceses provided financial support. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis intended to send what it had then in abundance: priests.

In 1968, the archdiocesan priests’ senate voted to formally establish a mission in Latin America. Initially, all eyes were on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, where the Diocese of New Ulm had already established a mission in San Lucas Toliman. Father Donald Schnitzius, then the director of the archdiocese’s Society for the Propagation of the Faith, made a visit to explore possibilities.

But providence had something else in store. Archbishop Leo Byrne was made aware of the need for priests in Venezuela, and so he sent Father Schnitzius to investigate. The priest spent two weeks in Venezuela in 1969, visiting nine different locations. Among them: Ciudad Guayana, a young but bustling metropolis in Venezuela’s underdeveloped, mineral-rich east.

The setting struck him for its natural beauty, but also because of its parallels to the archdiocese back in Minnesota. For one, Ciudad Guayana really consists of “twin cities,” San Felix and Puerto Ordaz. Like St. Paul and Minneapolis, these cities are separated by a wide river, the Rio Caroni. The location’s urban character, as well as its proximity to significant mining activity, were additional points of connection to the Twin Cities.

Father Schnitzius returned to St. Paul, and presented his findings to his brother priests. Two final options were proposed for the site of the archdiocesan mission: San Antonio, Guatemala, or Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela. The choice was put to a vote. Ciudad Guayana won by a considerable margin.

“And so it was that the presence of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis began in Venezuela,” wrote Father Schnitzius in his personal reflections on the establishment of the mission. “In December 1970 we became a mission-sending archdiocese when Fathers Ray Monsour and Larry Hubbard brought Christmas to the expectant people of Virgin del Valle Parish.”

Three phases

Deacon Friesen, who has written a brief history marking the anniversary, speaks of the “three phases” the mission has gone through since its founding. The first phase, he says, was characterized by sharing Minnesota priests to help build up the laity in Venezuela. Trained at the Maryknoll mission center in Bolivia, the first group of priests viewed themselves as itinerant missionaries, more focused on equipping local laypeople to be leaders in their community than on becoming permanent fixtures in it.

“You’re there, but you’re not there forever,” Deacon Friesen said, describing the approach.

One of these “first phase” priests is Father Jerry Hackenmueller, who served at the mission for 11 years, beginning in 1972. From a family that includes more than 30 missionary priests and religious, he describes his time as a missionary as “the fulfillment of what I always wanted to do.”

Even so, Father Hackenmueller describes the beginning of his time in Ciudad Guayana as “a real learning experience,” as it was for all the archdiocesan priests taking part in this new missionary venture.

“It was really starting from scratch,” he said of the mission at Virgen del Valle parish, located in Puerto Ordaz along the Rio Caroni. “The church building was there, but there was no pastor or church community.”

The warmth and generosity of the Venezuelan people were a helpful factor in making the transition, he said. And so was the assistance of members of the U.S.-based Missionary Helpers of the Sacred Heart, who helped the priests find housing and navigate the new culture around them.

One of these sisters, Sister Marian Pohlner, joined the Minnesota priests to create a mission team. They went door to door in the barrios, building relationships among the 50,000 people in the parish boundaries. Forming young people to be leaders, preparing families for the sacraments, developing religious formation curriculum and helping to establish local groups of apostolates like the Legion of Mary and Cursillo movement constituted their work. In 1975, Franciscan Sisters from Little Falls, Minnesota, joined the mission, providing assistance as nurses and educators.

Archbishop John Roach visited the mission in 1976, and it was determined that the mission would expand to serve a second parish community, Buen Pastor in San Felix. This marked the beginning of the mission’s second phase, characterized by establishing a number of new parishes in the poorest parts of Ciudad Guayana, building them up before turning them over to Venezuelan pastors.

At different points in the 1980s, the archdiocesan mission served four different parish communities: Virgen del Valle and Buen Pastor, as well as Jesucristo Resucitado and San Francisco de Asis, which the archdiocese helped to construct. Priests from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis also served as coordinators for many key ministries in Ciudad Guayana, which became its own diocese in 1979. At a time when the diocese was without a bishop, the local priests selected Father Hubbard to serve as diocesan administrator — even though he’d already returned to Minnesota.

As the mission marked its 25^th anniversary in the mid-1990s, it entered a new chapter. The Franciscan sisters had withdrawn, and the determination was made to concentrate efforts on one parish community, Jesucristo Resucitado. The parish is located in one of the poorest parts of San Felix, where an estimated 60,000 people live within its 11 barrios. The archdiocese and Diocese of Ciudad Guayana renew a contract every five years establishing the archdiocese’s pastoral responsibility for the community.

The singular focus has allowed the mission to build up Jesucristo Resucitado over the past few decades. A new church building was constructed in 2001, and the mission also established several chapels in the parish barrios. A parish center with a medical center, dentist office, classrooms, meeting spaces and apartments for visitors was also built in 2006, and a soup kitchen that provides weekly meals for 100 people in the neighborhood has been established.

A mutual exchange

The stability of having a single parish has also allowed for a new development that has become a hallmark of the mission’s current iteration: increased involvement of laypeople from the archdiocese.

Several groups have visited Ciudad Guayana over the past 20 years, usually focused on some type of service work in the community, such as playing with orphans, visiting the sick or cleaning houses. But those Minnesotans who have traveled to the mission are just as quick to point out that they’ve benefited enormously from the experience, too.

“What really struck me was the people,” said Tim Steigauf, who first got involved with the mission in 2000, when he reconnected with Father Schaffer, with whom he’d attended grade school at St. Pascal Baylon on St. Paul’s East Side. After serving on the archdiocese’s Venezuela Commission for several years, Steigauf visited in June 2013 with his family, a group of students from Hill-Murray School in Maplewood and people from several parishes to serve the poor at Jesucristo Resucitado. He says that while “you can’t unsee” the conditions of poverty in which many Venezuelans live, something else made an even greater impression.

“They have nothing, but they’re so happy,” he said. “It really makes you think, wow, what is life about?”

The visit also had a profound impact on his children, including his eldest daughter, Gretta. Now a medical student at the University of Minnesota, she says the visit is “one of the sole greatest contributors to my passion and desire to have a career in medicine.”

“It increased my desire to dedicate my future to serving others and helped show me how I would be the most successful and happy doing that,” she said, noting that she plans to provide medical care as a doctor to Venezuelans and other people in need,

Rebecca Medellin has led several visits to the mission for students at Cretin-Derham Hall high school in St. Paul, where she teaches Spanish. The visits were an opportunity for her students to experience Latin American culture, and also to challenge local teams to a friendly game of baseball, Venezuela’s national sport.

Though she can’t recall the boys from CDH winning a single game, she said it was still an invaluable experience for them, as they helped out with various projects.

“It was amazing to see these guys, (who) had never really done any service work, kind of be overtaken by this spirit of giving,” she said.

For Dean Hilgers, the most important things he’s taken away from his experiences at the mission are the friendships he’s made with the people of Jesucristo Resucitado. He first got involved with the mission in 2004, after he had sold his company and “was looking for a purpose.” He’s visited 10 times, often bringing others down to Ciudad Guayana to introduce them to the work of the mission.

His parish, St. Joseph in Waconia, has also formed a lasting partnership with the mission. They hold fundraisers every year, have sponsored the formation of Ciudad Guayana seminarians, and host delegations of Venezuelans who began visiting Minnesota in 2002 to celebrate the partnership, typically through performances of traditional Venezuelan dance.

“It’s been an enduring relationship, and it’s ongoing to this moment,” he said.

Uncertainty, but hope

Many of those relationships live on, but unfortunately, they’re limited today to Facebook messages and phone calls. Given the unrest that has engulfed Venezuela over the past several years, visits to the mission no longer take place, including a previously annual trip made by seminarians studying at The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

Venezuela’s economic and political crisis also presents challenges for the mission itself. A current shortage of gasoline, for instance, has limited the soup kitchen’s ability to deliver meals at a time when local people need them most. The sky-high rates of unemployment have prompted an exodus of young people from the country, removing a vital source of creativity and energy in the parish. The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t helped, as a ban on public celebrations of the Mass is in effect.

But it’s uncertainty about the one constant throughout the mission’s history that leaves Deacon Friesen most concerned: the presence of archdiocesan priests.

Although Father Schaffer and Father Dempsey have chosen to stay amid the turbulent situation, other factors complicate the archdiocese’s ability to continue sending priests. Given the breakdown in U.S.-Venezuelan diplomatic relations, obtaining a visa to the South American country has become a near impossibility for Americans. Father Schaffer would be unable to return to the country if he left. The limited number of ordained men back home in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis also suggests the possibility that there may soon not be priests available to send.

For those committed to the mission, this reality isn’t a cause to abandon the special relationship between Minnesota and Venezuela, but to creatively consider new possibilities. Deacon Friesen, for instance, would like to see a visit by an archdiocesan delegation to meet with their counterparts in Ciudad Guayana and ask the question, “What do we want to do together?”

“There’s been three different kinds of incarnations of this mission,” he said. “What’s the fourth incarnation? What will it look like? So the relationship can continue, even if it looks different.”

Other Minnesota dioceses that have had missions to Latin America have already crossed this bridge. St. Cloud supports a Venezuelan diocese financially, and has a Venezuelan priest serve in Latino ministry in the diocese, while in New Ulm, a nonprofit was established to operate the Guatemala mission formerly run by the diocese.

Father Schaffer is hopeful that the priestly presence can continue, especially considering the shortage of priests in Ciudad Guayana, where there are 40-or-so priests for a population exceeding 1 million.

“It would be great to continue to have the support of a priestly presence here, to bring the sacraments of the Church to the people here,” he said. “That’s a huge gift.”

Either way, Father Schaffer is exploring options to ensure that the 50-year legacy of the “Misioneros de San Pablo” continues, even if in a new way. He’s looking into establishing an endowment that could provide ongoing financial support to the mission’s charitable initiatives. He also hopes to establish a hospice center to minister to the many elderly in Ciudad Guayana who have been abandoned during the crisis, with the hope that caregivers from Minnesota could volunteer to staff it.

“We just need to be open to whatever the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church to,” he said. “What can this relationship look like, so that it can be mutually beneficial, to both the people in the archdiocese and the people here?”

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Twenty-two tons of rice on way to mission

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And where there’s a need, there’s an opportunity for generosity.

That about sums up the latest effort of local lay people to meet the dire needs of the people of Ciudad Guayana. A shipment of 44,000 pounds of rice is on its way to the archdiocese’s mission, but the method of delivery won’t be normal — if there is such a thing presently in Venezuela, rocked by economic collapse and deep-seated unrest.

The shipment has already made its way from Fargo, North Dakota, to Miami via semi-truck, said Tim Steigauf, a parishioner at Assumption in St. Paul, who helped purchase the rice and is coordinating its transportation. Locally owned Premier Banks and SpartanNash, a food distribution company, have also sponsored the project, and SpartanNash provided shipping to Miami.

From there, the 22 tons of rice will be transported to Venezuela by sea in smaller, separate shipments. The shipments will need to make their way through customs, a process facilitated by a Venezuelan nonprofit called the Foundation La La. The foundation has helped coordinate two other such deliveries in the past, and its support is critical, given that the embattled Venezuelan government has essentially ceased allowing foreign aid agencies into the country.

The Red Cross and Caritas International, for instance, are currently unable to get food into the country, food desperately needed by the people of Ciudad Guayana, said Father Greg Schaffer, pastor of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ mission parish in Cuidad Guayana, Jesucristo Resucitado. Malnutrition is rampant, and the current food supply is likely to only last a few more months, he said.

Most of the rice will be distributed by the Foundation La La to 100 different religious-affiliated soup kitchens in the Venezuelan cities of Ciudad Guayana and Ciudad Bolivar. Father Schaffer said these services feed 11,000 children. An additional 8 tons are designated for the Diocese of Ciudad Guayana, and will be distributed to a variety of local parishes and communities, including a hospice for men dying of AIDS run by the Missionaries of Charity.

A separate shipment, containing eight pallets of fortified rice and donated goods like medicine and diapers, is also being sent by the archdiocesan chapter of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

Father Schaffer said the first portion from the 22-ton shipment is already on its way to Venezuela, and should arrive during the second week of November.

“If we can pull this off, this will be kind of a big deal,” said Father Schaffer, who also serves as the vicar general of the Diocese of Ciudad Guayana.

For Father Schaffer, the development of a viable way of getting goods into Venezuela provides hope that people from the archdiocese will still be able to contribute to assist the mission, even with conditions in the South American country as tenuous as they are.

For Steigauf, the possibility of helping meet the material needs of the hungry, a corporal work of mercy, makes all the effort worth it.

“It’s one of those things that really makes you feel like you’re finally doing something,” he said. “It’s keeping people from dying.”