An interview with 80-year-old Columban missionary, Fr Peter Hughes, co-ordinator of indigenous and human rights for REPAM, a Catholic Church network that promotes the right and dignity of people living in the Amazon by Mike Finnerty of the Mayo News.
Imagine becoming a Columban Missionary Priest at the age of 17 in the Ireland of the early 1960s.
Then, imagine a short time later leaving for Latin America and staying there for almost 60 years. Helping the people who live there in any way you can.
This is Fr Peter Hughes’ story. A story of how a young boy who was born and bred in Ballinrobe has spent his entire adult life trying to educate, and listening to, some of the indigenous people in one of the poorest places on the planet.
And, in more recent years, trying to highlight the ‘climate change emergency’ through a project which works towards the defence and protection of the Amazon rainforests and eco-system, which produces 20 percent of the world’s oxygen and 20 percent of the world’s drinking water.
When you meet him, Fr Peter insists he’s “nothing special by any means. I don’t think of myself as doing good things for everybody else, it’s not like that. I have a job to do and I’m trying to do it as best I can.”
He’s an environmental activist and a man who tries to help those who cannot help themselves. Or as Fr Peter puts it himself, “I’m a kind of an educator, in the widest sense, just not in the classroom.”
“Ideas and values. Values are terribly important,” he explains. “But, people we work with, like lawyers, they’re not allowed to just give a class. What they do is listen to the people who are already involved in conflict and help them to be able to see the point and organise their struggle in a more effective way to bring about results.”
Fr Peter has travelled back to Ireland for the first time in five years and he doesn’t need to think for long when you ask him what he’s missed most about home.
“To tell you the truth, the thing I came home for this time, and I have absolutely enjoyed it, and felt it, is to be able to walk on green grass. To be able to look at the beautiful countryside. To be able to look at mountains, to be able to see Lough Mask and Lough Corrib. To go for a day’s fishing. To be able to put your face up to the rain. Because where I live, there’s no rain. I live in a coastal desert. And obviously things like family and friends. These are the things that you miss.”
“I’ve had a great life, I’ve had a wonderful life, and great friends,” he continues. “You get to see so many people and you get to meet so many places.”
We have been talking for almost an hour, and having heard about the trials and tribulations faced by the people of Peru and the indigenous tribes in the Amazon Basin, and the challenges he helps them to try and face on a daily basis, you wonder what his definition of ‘a good life’ is? Especially when many people reading this would feel that living and working in a third world country for six decades — in a city that is located on a desert coast, where it hasn’t rained heavily since 1969 — would represent anything but ‘a good life’.
“It’s about bringing about change and witnessing change,” he replies. “Looking at people, changing their attitudes, growing into a different way of thinking, and having the power to be able to do something about it.”
As for the future, Fr Peter (or ‘Padre Pedro’ as he’s known in Peru) intends to keep doing what he’s doing “for as long as I have the health, with the help of God.”
Fr Peter Hughes attending the Synod on the Pan-Amazon region in 2019 in the Vatican.
“And that’s going to be the deciding factor about what’s going to happen,” he said. “If I get some more years to live, that decides everything. For me, I wouldn’t understand, or appreciate, retiring. Maybe keep on doing something in a smaller way would be would be something more like it. I hardly noticed turning 80,” he said.
“Age is totally unimportant, it’s irrelevant. It’s about how you feel, about how you how you are. And there’s no such thing as perfection. That’s a bad word. Everybody has his or her own struggles. Good days, bad days, not so good days. Life is like that. And when we’re down, we have to try and get up again and begin again.”
“Use the talents that we have. Every person has gifts. Every person has amazing things to contribute. And I think leadership is allowing people to have gifts. Leadership is trying to create situations where people can use and grow into their own gifts, whatever they are.
“I’m the co-ordinator of indigenous and human rights for REPAM, this network that is in vogue for the last number of years,” he adds. “It’s a going concern, but it has to expand and grow and help people so it’s important.”
How would like to be remembered? “I’d like to be remembered as another person from here. From Ballinrobe. From Mayo, you know. Another person, who grew up here, has friends here. Nothing more than that. That’s more than enough.”
FACTFILE
Name: Fr Peter Hughes
Age: 80
From: Ballinrobe
Lives: Lima, Peru
Occupation: Columban Missionary Priest
Did you know? Fr Peter is the co-ordinator of indigenous and human rights for REPAM, a Catholic Church network that promotes the right and dignity of people living in the Amazon.
Courtesy: Mayo News