Peter Chanel goes to South America

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

A New Zealand priest, Tony O’Connor, is presently doing up a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter Chanel in Paso Real, Venezuela.

Saint Peter Chanel might well be the Proto Martyr of Oceania, revered with affection in the Pacific and rightly so. But he also stepped on to the soil of South America when the first Marist Missionaries spent a rest time in Valparaiso, Chile, says Father Tony. But that is not the only reason why he is known, loved and revered in Peru and Venezuela in the places where for over fifty years the Marist Fathers have ministered.

Amidst the poverty and the growing violence of our times “Pedro Chanel” as he is known has become for the people here in “Barrio Paso Real” the “gentle, non-violent one” who could say as he meekly waited for the end “Death is good for me”. On the 28^th of April 2011, as on that day every year, the people of the community of San Pedro Chanel , Paso Real, came to celebrate life, remembering their quiet patron, sang songs they had composed to him, prayed with him for his barrio burdened down by drugs, bullets, violent deaths and whose mothers like Mary stand at the foot of the Cross. Pedro’s icon and relic were displayed before the altar and valued artifacts from Futuna were placed before him in his honour.

The Feast this year was within the octave of Easter and the coloured pastel materials like the Pacific lava-lava adorned the Cross, the lectern, the altar and Pedro’s makeshift shrine. Christ has Risen alleluia, Pedro too lives on in his broken down chapel and out in his suffering barrio in between the high walls of the airport and the fields of sugar cane . Violence and revenge are not Pedro’s way .”We sing Chanel” , they sing in Spanish,”Pedro Chanel, Mary’s tender voice made a gracious choice in you”.

The mural in the photo has Mary with the child Jesus, and St Peter Chanel is seated with the palm of martyrdom in his hand surrounded by children.

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