A church for the new parish of La Fonseca
Monday, August 12, 2013

Project Code: 231-01-19

The community of Nueva Guinea in the south of Nicaragua was established in the 1960s for resettled peasant farmers. Today, it has a population of 140,000 people, drawn from many different regions of the country. Originally, it was intended that only Baptists and other Protestants would live there. Every attempt was made to prevent Catholic families from settling there.  They were also discriminated against in the distribution of land. Today, there are no fewer than 70 different Protestant ecclesial communities in Nueva Guinea, but the Catholic Church has also established herself here. She is helping many people, since unemployment in the town is high and the children are often forced to work so as to help the family make ends meet. At the same time youth crime is also rising. The Church is opposing violence, helping women and children, working in the schools and endeavoring to counter the evil influences that are promoted by the mass media and spreading ever more widely within society.

At the center of all these activities, however, is the celebration of the Eucharist, as the parish priest, Father Mariano Martinez emphasizes. His parish community makes a particular effort to prepare for the religious feasts and liturgical celebrations, and great emphasis is also placed on Eucharistic adoration and on catechesis. Catholic life is flourishing, and the young Catholic community of Nueva Guinea has already produced five religious vocations – three nuns and two priests. In addition, two young men from the locality are currently preparing for ordination and another two have just entered the seminary.

By now, in fact, the parish has grown far too big and has been divided. The newly created parish of La Fonseca is now made up of 41 rural communities and almost 2,500 Catholic families. Some 165 catechists are active within the parish, while 300 children and 450 young people are involved in various different parish groups. Now the time has come to build a church for this new parish; it will be dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. ACN is planning to support the construction of this church with a contribution of $42,000.

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