It was 1979 when we opened our first missions in Mexico, in Temascalapa, about a 90-minute drive from Mexico City, and Buenavista Tomatlán, near Guadalajara. Both were sprawling rural parishes with multiple chapels serving thousands of Catholic families. Today, Missionary Servants have the pastoral care of Parroquia San Martín Caballero (St. Martin of Tours) in Iztapalapa, the most remote “borough” in Mexico City and Parroquia Santa María Ajoloapan located about 38 miles north of Mexico City as well as our Novitiate in Huitzila, not far from Ajoloapan. Most recently a new mission project, the Hands of the Potter, offers workshops to teach, inspire and animate the laity in being missionary disciples.
History
Seminarians raising mission cross in Latin America.
Raising the “Mission Cross” is a longstanding tradition dating to the time of our Founder. At each mission where we work to bring God’s love to His people, we place a large, unadorned cross in the ground. This cross serves as a reminder to all of us that we share in the suffering and the triumph of Christ. It bears no Christ figure because each missionary is to be the Body of Christ to the people he serves.
1957 Return to Puerto Rico
When Fr. Judge first visited the island of Puerto Rico in 1923, he didn’t speak a word of Spanish! However, this small hindrance did not stop him. His desire to reach out to the poor and abandoned people he found there transcended the existing language barrier.
Beginning in the late 1950s we served in Coamo, a municipality located in the southern region of the island as well as in the capital of San Juan. Through the 19070s and 1980s, our priests and Brothers expanded to Canóvanas, an agricultural zone where sugar cane was cultivated and produced, and to the suburbs of El Comandante. Today, our missionaries serve parishes in the Diocese of Fajardo-Humacao, including the area of Loíza, where we oversee the sacramental needs of the thousands of Catholics who live and reside in these impoverished areas.
Choctaw Indian children at Conehatta mission.
Today, Holy Rosary Indian Mission is where Father Bob Goodyear, S.T., serves the Choctaw people who live on the reservation. In many respects, the reservation is like its own country. Residents speak their own language and have their own schools, hospital, and police force. Years ago, Father Bob translated the Mass into the Choctaw language and is the only priest who can celebrate Mass in that language. Through the years, the tribe has managed to preserve its identity and culture which is no small feat considering its history.
Most Choctaw Indians were forced out of Mississippi in the 1830s during the Trail of Tears when the federal government relocated Native Americans to reservations out west. Few remained but those who did had no rights, no identity, and very little hope of surviving as a people. The Missionary Servants first came to Holy Rosary in 1944. We’ve been privileged to live and serve among the Choctaw people.
Fr. Judge dies at Providence Hospital Washington, DC Nov. 23, 1933
By August 1933, Fr. Judge’s health was starting to take a turn for the worse. At the end of that month, he celebrated his last Mass at the Cenacle in Silver Spring, MD, before entering the hospital.
During his months of confinement in the hospital he spent his time in quiet prayer. The rosary seldom left his hands. Often he said, “I’ve made a contract with God. All I have to do is to say Jesus. I cannot pray, for I’m sick.” Father Thomas Augustine Judge died, age 65, at 3:00 p.m. on November 23, 1933, with no sign of struggle or pain, surrounded by two Sisters, the attending priest, Mother Mary of the Incarnate Word, and several of the Brothers from Silver Spring. The cause of death on the official certificate was listed as “cerebral embolus”. On Wednesday morning, November 29, at 8:00 a.m., his spiritual sons and daughters closed his casket for the last time and accompanied his body through the streets of Philadelphia to the chapel of St. Vincent’s Seminary in Germantown where he had attended seminary and spent the first years of his priestly ministry. Father Judge was buried beside Mother Boniface in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Philadelphia in the plot of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity.
Taken from God’s Valiant Warrior by Dennis Berry, S.T.