The Saved—and Suddenly Orphaned
In early June, the worst secret in the world broke.
It spread like Canadian wildfire smoke into the hardscrabble cities of Chalco and Guadalajara, Mexico. It filtered southeast into the terraced hillsides of Guatemala and Honduras, and then it began to spread into Brasilia and São Paulo, Brazil. It finally settled across the Atlantic Ocean in the dry lands of Tanzania.
The secret? Fr. Dan Leary, the spiritual father and chaplain to many thousands of poor Boystown and Girlstown students, was leaving. It reached the ears of his young ones like the sudden, thin, plunging blade of a guillotine. In an instant, their souls began to split apart—one half would hold memories, the other was left to mourn their chaplain who would soon become a ghost. When their emotions settled, a concrete thought began to harden in them: Why would Padre Dan abandon us?
I was a bystander at the Girlstown community of Villa de Las Niñas in Chalco, Mexico, a few hours before Fr. Leary boarded a plane to return to diocesan ministry this past week. After serving as chaplain to the Sisters of Mary for three years, he was asked to resume his life as a pastor at St. John’s in Clinton, Maryland. Overnight, he was given approximately 18,455 fewer souls to care for.
The children he cared for are the poorest children in the world; they are the rescued ones from the movie Sound of Freedom.
Released to wide acclaim this past week, the film features actor Jim Caviezel—portraying Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad—risking his life to save a single Honduran trafficked girl. In his indomitable war to save a single soul from a jungle kingpin, Caviezel travels by boat into a Conrad-like Heart of Darkness, a thin waterway splitting a Nariño Province jungle in Columbia, one of the most dangerous places in the world.
In an act of unflinching bravery, Caviezel ends up—against every conceivable odd—saving the girl and bringing her back into the arms of her harrowed father.
For many years, the Sisters of Mary, too, have traveled by boat to reach children. But it is usually the sisters’ climbs up tree-choked mountains that rescue the children. Two-by-two, the sisters ascend the most dangerous places in the world during “recruitment week.”
