By Joseph Fedora, M.M.

As a champion of peace and justice, a Maryknoll priest is committed to life in a Peruvian shantytown

 

During the height of political violence in Peru in the early 1990s, Maryknoll Father Thomas Burns opted to continue living with a humble family in a shantytown of Lima—even as Catholic priests, Sisters and lay workers in similar situations were being assassinated by Shining Path guerrillas.

Burns stayed—as did many other missioners serving in Peru at that time—because, essentially, he had willingly placed himself in harm’s way when he accepted God’s invitation to become a Maryknoll missioner.

“When you’re in the midst of a violent situation, thank God you repress your fear,” says Burns, who later was diagnosed and treated for post-traumatic stress disorder that was complete with flashbacks and hyperventilating. “Otherwise you can’t function.”

Well before the Shining Path launched its bloody terror campaign in 1980, the priest from Queens, N.Y., had already committed himself to entering the messy reality of the poor and to doing it with compassion. “I need to feel the earth beneath my feet,” he says.  “I’m the type of guy who moves from the heart and then to the brain.” To feel the earth beneath your feet in a place like Pamplona Alta—the shantytown in south Lima where Burns has lived these past 36 years—means to survive in a world where babies die prematurely and where refugees flee from areas devastated by economic and political violence.

A dying baby during Burns’ early years in the burgeoning settlements that were springing up around Lima spurred the priest to action. While talking with a visiting priest from Seattle one day, Burns was interrupted by a knock on the door. A woman with a dying baby in her arms asked for an emergency baptism. After Burns baptized the child, the visitor mentioned that in his 15 years as a priest he had never done an emergency baptism, even though he had worked in poor parishes. “That blew my mind,” says Burns.  “How can (a priest) work with the poor and not do an emergency baptism? It’s a part of life. Then I realized that it shouldn’t be a part of life, that it’s not natural, and that it’s wrong.”

Burns was angry but—like any person well grounded—he channeled his anger into a passionate search for justice. He lobbied Capitol Hill, demonstrating the connection between debt service payments and emergency baptisms, and helped to push through precedent-setting amendment mandating that debt readjustment programs have built-in policies protecting the poor. Maryknoll named Burns its Justice and Peace representative in Peru.

Speaking out for justice, particularly for the masses of poor invading vacant land on the desert south of Lima, put Burns on the watch lists of the government and the terrorists. Once an undercover government agent recorded his talk at a baptism, and later when the Shining Path brought its war against the government to Lima with a campaign of car bombing and assassinations, the lanky, 6-foot-3-inch missioner was shadowed by a member of his own parish who had joined the rebels.

He recalls a parish cookout in the 1990s, when Lucho, a former parishioner who had left the church, approached Burns and said he heard the priest preaching at Mass. Burns remembers seeing him in church and thinking, “What a miracle.”  He knew Lucho from when he was a member of the choir and was thinking of entering the seminary.  The priest had always admired Lucho even after he left the church; he was a passionate young man and a natural leader.  Then Lucho said he was a member of Shining Path.

It wasn’t until later that Burns realized he’d been warned. For the Shining Path, one warning was all its perceived enemies usually got—if that. “I had indirectly criticized the Shining Path in my homily,” Burns says. “I know Lucho really loved and admired me, but I also knew that if the Shining Path—who had stolen Lucho’s soul—told him tomorrow to shoot me, he’d do it.”By that time at least 50,000 displaced people had taken refuge in south Lima, fleeing the violence in the provincial villages during the 1980s. “Many were my neighbors in Pamplona and many of them were widows and orphans, some of whose relatives have been disappeared,” Burns says.

Furthermore, his work for justice and peace was not only putting himself in danger. He worried about the family with whom he lived in Pamplona—Clorinda and Jacinto Moreno and their children.

“Of course my involvement and its implications for the family worried me,” he says. “But if I didn´t commit myself their situation would be just as much at risk over the long haul. We had to stop the terror. What if something happened to them because I did nothing?  How could I live with that? ... It is a risk you take and, thank God, it turned out all right.”

Today, with the Shining Path virtually defeated, except for a small fraction in the Peruvian jungle, Burns is still seeking justice for the survivors and families of the almost 70,000 people killed in that political violence. After publication in 2003 of a report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission documenting the atrocities committed by both sides of the 20-year conflict, Burns founded the South Lima Chapter of  “Never Again!”

“The role of the chapter is to make sure that the report’s recommendations are implemented,” explains Burns, “recommendations which deal with reparation to victims and impunity as well as health insurance and land titles for refugees.”

If feeling the earth beneath your feet means feeling the pain of the people, it also means feeling their joy, especially the joy of belonging.  Burns belongs in Peru and to the Peruvian people who have accepted him as—literally—one of their own.

“When anyone asks me about my family, I always include Tom,” says 36-year-old Carmen Moreno.  “I was 8 years old when he moved in with us; he’s not ‘Father’ Tom to me, he’s Tom, my brother and friend.”

Twenty-eight years ago, Carmen’s parents – Clorinda and Jacinto – invited Burns to live with them.  “Every time I’d come home at night, Jacinto and Clorinda would be waiting for me to shoot the bull and have a bite to eat.  I would never eat alone, unlike my years living in a rectory,” says Burns. “This family is my family.  I’m the godfather of all the kids and grandkids. … I’m also very spoiled!”

The Moreno family isn’t the only one watching Burns’ back; he also has his parish and Maryknoll families to support him. They all supply him with an abundance of flashbacks that rouses not rapid breathing but rather a profound sense of satisfaction.  He has felt the earth beneath his feet and has walked the walk.

“I hope I have a lot more walking yet to do,” says Burns.  “We’re Kingdom people sharing with others our passion for life … trying to create a world where people live together as one