Why the Society came
The Society’s Latin American mission was not an old colonial inheritance but a deliberate, modern choice, made in answer to a Pope’s appeal. The Church across the region was vast and under-served, and the need was for priests willing to live among the poor of the cities and the countryside rather than to administer from a distance. That is the work the Society set out to do, in Chile first, and later in Ecuador, Brazil and beyond.
Much of it took a particular shape: the forming of Basic Christian Communities, small groups of lay people who met to pray, to support one another, and to work together for change in their own neighbourhoods. It was a way of building the Church from the ground up, in the hands of local people, rather than bringing it ready-made.
Chile, and the cost
That work carried a cost the Society did not go looking for. When Chile fell under military dictatorship in the 1970s, the small Christian communities and the priests who served them found themselves in an atmosphere of fear and violence, and some of the Mill Hill missionaries spoke up for human rights when it was dangerous to do so. Some suffered for it. In time, as the situation and the Society’s own numbers changed, the mission in Chile drew to a close.
It is worth telling that part plainly rather than skipping it. The Society does not present itself as heroic. But standing with people under a dictatorship, at risk to yourself, is a real expression of what mission can mean, and it belongs in the story.
Brazil and Ecuador
Beyond Chile, the Society’s deepest Latin American commitments have been in Brazil and Ecuador. In Brazil, where it has worked since the 1970s, the mission became its longest and steadiest in the region: pastoral work, healthcare, and standing with landless rural communities and the poor of the cities. In Ecuador, the work began with care and education for families in the shanties of Guayaquil and reached into the stilt settlements built out over the water, where Mass might be celebrated in a home balanced above the tide.
The Society no longer works everywhere it once did in Latin America. It withdrew from Peru as its numbers fell and priorities shifted, and handed work to local clergy where it could. Today its presence in the region is smaller, centred on Brazil and Ecuador, with a single member in Bolivia. What has not changed is the manner of it: arriving as companions rather than experts, placing local leadership at the centre, and holding the preaching of the Gospel and the work of justice together as one thing.
Going further
If the Society’s work in Latin America has drawn your interest, you are welcome to take it further. Pray for the communities of Brazil and Ecuador and the missionaries who serve them, learn more about the Society’s wider work, or support the mission as it continues in the region. However you take part, you would be standing with people the Society has chosen, by long preference, not to overlook.
