Determination leading to success in Sicuani, Peru

By Sister Ancilla Maloney, IHM

High in the south Andes mountains of Peru sits the Quechua community of Acco Acco Phalla, at an altitude of over 12,000 feet above sea level. (Acco means wind in Quechua. Two accos means it’s very windy!) Leaders of the community, which consists of seven settlements of roughly 20 to 30 families each, came to the IHM Sisters last year to ask for help in building a new church. Theirs had been built more than 100 years ago of adobe and was in ruins.

Scattered across the Andes mountain range that makes up the Diocese of Sicuani are dozens of such small communities. The diocese has been twinned with the Diocese of Greensburg since the days of Vatican II in the 1960s when  the bishops of the two dioceses became friends. Six of these are the responsibility of the mission parish of San Felipe, which has been administered by IHM Sister Eileen Egan (Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scranton, Pa.) since 1992. A grant was written to an archdiocesan foundation in Germany, but no response has been received to date — hence the request to the sisters for help.

However, the Quechua people heard about the grant request and decided to go ahead anyway, as the grant required some contribution from them toward the budget. The leaders pledged that their communities would work on making large adobe bricks made of mud and straw and baked in the sun, which they did this past summer. The weather is very dry with no rain from mid-April until the end of November, perfect for making adobes, 6000 of them!

The work is under the direction of Irene Espirilla Choque, a Quechua-speaking catechist for the San Felipe parish, and Lucresia Ataman, who is directing the construction. With donations from our Greensburg Mission office and also the Pontifical Mission office in the Archdiocese of New York, as well as with other donations, not only did the people make the adobes, but one of their number laid out the foundation which the people filled with huge stones and concrete, then raised the walls of the church and put on a roof.

The work was done just in time before the rains came, which would have destroyed the adobes. Now it stands ready for its next infusion of funds to complete the church.

Over the past several years, IHM Sister Ancilla Maloney has been giving mission co-op presentations in various parishes in the Diocese of Greensburg. She volunteered to join Sister Eileen and their native Sister Norma Poma-Arpi in 2012, where she ran the library/recreation program in the parish, wrote grants for several needs in the diocese, and directed arts and crafts activities for the annual summer program. She now resides in an IHM Convent in Scranton.

To learning more about our sister Diocese in Sicuani Peru, click here
To learn more about our various Missions Programs in the Diocese of Greensburg, click here.