Educating Peru’s children brings faith and joy

Rogers Park, the oldest of five boys, attending St. Margaret Mary School and St. George and Notre Dame high schools.

While he thought he might have a religious vocation, a Christian Brother at St. George advised him to get a college education and a secular job before trying to join an order. He did, working in advertising for a chain of local newspapers before entering the Society of Jesus at age 29 in 1981. For the past 14 years, O’Leary has worked in the “Fe y Alegria” (Faith and Joy) schools in Peru, a modern-day missionary. He was honored for his work by the local Society of Jesus at the end of August.


The Catholic New World: What was it about the Society of Jesus that attracted you?

Father Jim O’Leary: First, there was a really personal experience at USF (University of San Francisco). I was one of these kids who didn’t go to Mass too much, didn’t go to confession too much, didn’t like that kind of stuff. Finally, for one reason or another, I decided to go to confession, and the priest was an older Jesuit. I remember walking in and saying, “Father, my biggest sin is pride,” and he said, “Well, that’s great, but why don’t we start with some more concrete day-in-and-day-out kinds of stuff?” That was a great response and it really appealed to me.

Then when I worked here in Chicago, I got to know a number of the Jesuits who were studying at the University of Chicago, and they would invite me for dinner once in a while. I really enjoyed the conversations and the camaraderie and the spirit in the house. I began taking some graduate class at Loyola University in Jesuit spirituality, and it really appealed to me, the call to be a companion of Christ, the desire to encounter God in all people. It was really the spirituality and the hospitality that attracted me.


TCNW: How did you end up in Peru?

FJO: When I entered the society, they asked what I would like to do if I were to become a Jesuit. I gave them some options of what I thought I could do, with my talents and so forth. Then they asked what were the things I would never want to do, and I said the thing I would never want to do is teach.

So when I entered the novitiate in 1981, they sent me off to teach for a semester at a smaller school called Nativity on the Lower East Side of New York. I found I enjoyed teaching. I never thought I would—it was a “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” kind of thing—but I was just amazed that with the right environment and a little bit of help—care, I suppose—kids could really learn, and that when they learned, they became better people: less resentful, less rebellious, they became happier kids. That made a difference in my life.

I did two years of teaching at a school down on Roosevelt Road, Holy Family. I taught eighth grade. Then I came back to do my theology, and that’s when I started to discern what does God want me to do?

I started exploring this whole school movement in Latin America called Fe y Alegria, and I suppose I have a sort of fundamentalist understanding of, as the society says, the “magus,” the more, the greater glory of God, and I thought if I could do good work at a school like Nativity with 100 kids, I could do really great work in a school system trying to educate lots and lots of kids.

So I went down to visit, then I sat down to talk to the Chicago provincial. He said, “I’ll give you two options: You can think about working in Nepal or you can think about working in Peru.” I didn’t know Nepal. The only thing I knew about Nepal was that in Nepal, people drink tea with yak butter. In Peru, people drink coffee, and I’m a coffee drinker, so I’d probably be more comfortable in Peru.

It wasn’t really Peru that attracted me. It was more Fe Y Alegria and the education of poor kids on sort of grand level.


TCNW: This is probably a good time to ask about Fe y Alegria. How many schools and how many kids are involved?

FJO: Fe y Alegria considers a movement, which means it is increasing all the time and opening new schools. Right now we have 65 schools in Peru—that’s 65 regular schools. Then we have a network of 87 one-room schoolhouses in rural areas. We’re educating about 447,000 kids.


TCNW: What is your role there?

FJO: I’ve had four jobs in Fe y Alegria since I went down there in 1991. Right now I am the director—it’s sort of a combination of the president and principal—of the Fe y Alegria school in a town in northern Peru called Jaen, which has about 1,250 students, and I also am the coordinator for a network of five Fe y Alegria schools in the jungle.


TCNW: What is special about the Fe y Alegria schools?

FJO: First of all, there’s a lot of work with the teachers. They—and I—are public employees and we receive salaries from the Ministry of Education in the government. Fe y Alegria dedicates a lot of time to forming the teachers so the teachers don’t consider their work just to be a job but consider it their apostolate.

There is a real strong faith focus in the Fe y Alegria. There is a formal agreement between the Vatican and Peru so the Catholic religion is taught in the public schools. That’s changing a little bit, because we have to be a little ecumenical.


TCNW: When people think about missionaries, they think of people who go out and convert people. That’s not what you do. What do you see as your role?

FJO: I don’t really see my work as that. There is a movement of aggressive sects from the U.S. down there—the Mormons are very aggressive. I don’t see my work as converting people. I don’t think the people with whom I work—the teachers and so forth—consider me a missionary. I think they see me as a priest, and I think they see me as a director of a school, and I hope they see me as a friend. So what is my job down there?

For me, I see myself as trying to help people become the best people they can. It’s kind of simple: trying to help people understand how we can love God and love our neighbor in the best way possible. I think you can do that in Peru. I think you can do that here in Chicago. Anybody can be a missionary. You don’t have to get on a plane and go to a foreign country.


TCNW: What’s life like in Jaen?

FJO: It’s a city in transition. It’s a city where people are immigrating to from the mountains, where families with kids are coming to find work. The term we use down there is it’s an emerging city. It was a town and now it’s starting to become a city. One of the problems is that it doesn’t have a common history or a common culture. There’s not a real strong sense of the common good. It’s becoming a little bit like everybody’s out for himself. So what we do is try to bring people together, unite people, form community within the school and outside the school, help people their human rights.

It’s a busy town, because all the goods that come from the coast—cooking oil and sugar and batteries—pass through this town on the way to the jungle. People come from the mountains to sell their coffee and rice and buy their cooking oil and sugar. Unfortunately, they are also growing a lot of opium poppies for heroin. If it’s that or rice, there’s not much of an alternative.

It’s a very noisy city. There’s a lot of unemployment. The men drive little “mototaxis,” motorcycles converted into taxis, and there are thousands of them.

Then when you get into that northern warm climate, the people themselves start to change. They like to party and the music is always on, so there’s always that kind of stuff going on.


TCNW: When you come home, what surprises you about life here?

FJO: The last time I was here was three years ago. … Down where I live, we get Animal Planet on television, and we used to watch it in my community. There was a show, a very good show, about people I think from the southern U.S. who would go out and look for abandoned animals and bring them to the shelter and this kind of thing, and they would take them to hospitals to operate on them and rehabilitate them. I think what surprised me was the resources dedicated to animals, when down there, it’s so hard [for people] to get into a hospital, and the hospitals can’t really do anything for you. If you’re basically a poor person, they only thing they’ll do is give you tranquilizers. They wouldn’t operate.

I think in some ways I care more about international relations and the world and less about the U.S. I look at some of my friends and my family and, this is not a criticism at all, but I think the focus here is just on the U.S. and the rest of the world kind of exists but it’s not real important.

I know it’s sad, but the young woman missing in Aruba and all the press given to that … New Orleans is really a disaster, but there are more things going on in the world. I think we forget about that.

The other thing I notice is watching the TV sometimes, the commercials are so attractive and appealing, they get me convinced that I can buy a car without paying or that I can buy a house without really paying for it or if I buy something with a credit card somehow I win. It confuses me.
In the last three years, I think the traffic in Chicago has really increased. I heard people saying that when gas got up to $3, they weren’t going to drive, but now it’s up to $3.30, and I don’t see people leaving their cars at home. I think the affluence … I wonder of people realize they are paying the price for it.

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