When I was a novice at Milford, Ohio, we were taught that the Jesuits are a missionary order with a vocation to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. But the only opportunity we were offered to do so was to continue our college studies at our formation program in Lima, Peru. I signed up out of a sense of adventure. I hardly knew anything about the country or its culture, but I ended up staying for 58 years, and people have come to know me as “Mateo,” which is easier to say in Spanish.

Fortunately, during our traditional humanities studies, I got to spend my summer and inter-semester vacations in little towns in the Andes mountains. After coming back to the then-Chicago Province for the rest of my studies, I had the opportunity to study for a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. For my regency, through the Andean Pastoral Institute in the Incan capital of Cuzco, I did fieldwork in southern Peru and learned about the syncretic religious customs and beliefs of the Quechua Indian peasants.

After theology studies in Berkeley, Calif., the Peruvian provincial asked me to help start a rural parish and social justice program in the central Andes near the city of Huancayo. I was there for 12 years, and during the late ’80s and early ’90s, we were attacked by the Shining Path, a guerilla group of terrorists. Unfortunately, the government’s armed response was just as bad. Many of our people were caught between the terrorists and the government’s army, and were killed.

All we could do was be present with them since we were not allowed to continue our ministries. The late Fr. Robert Dolan, SJ, replaced me there, and the provincial turned me into a “displaced person.” In Lima I worked for the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference’s Human Rights Commission, where we defended innocent people who were unjustly accused of being terrorists.

We also worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. At that time, I also began the “hobby” of writing summaries of the pope’s social teaching encyclicals so people could actually begin to learn “the Church’s best kept secret.” Most recently I have been doing that with the documents in preparation for the Synod of Bishops in Rome.

After a sabbatical at the Chicago Theological Union to obtain my doctor of ministry degree, the provincial asked me to be the pastor of the parish church in the Agustino neighborhood in Lima. I followed in the footsteps of many Jesuit Fathers in that ministry with the urban poor: Daniel Hartnett and Kevin Flaherty, and the late Frank Chamberlain and John Sima.

For health reasons I “retired” in 2021 and will be living at a senior living facility in the greater Detroit area. Of course, Jesuits don’t retire! So, in addition to my “popularizing” the Church’s social teaching, thanks to the internet, I am now the Peruvian province chaplain of the Christian Life Movement. But don’t let me forget my beginnings! I am from Louisville, and while I am known as “Mateo” in Peru, Fr. Brad Schaeffer, SJ, reminds me that I come from a very long line of Kentucky Mattinglys!