News

Kaukauna man's trip takes him to the poor

By Joanne Flemming
Compass Correspondent

	REUNION TIME: Luke Hansen visits Santa Cruz School in Tucson, Ariz., where Manitowoc Franciscan Sr. Leonette Kochan, who was his principal at St. Mary Grade School in Kaukauna, is the principal. Hansen visited the school while on a 30-day pilgrimage. (Submitted photo)

Luke Hansen learned something about himself, the reliability of God and life for Mexicans in southwest border towns while on a 30-day pilgrimage.

The 24-year-old Kaukauna man and seven other Jesuit novices left their novitiate in St. Paul on separate journeys. They each had $35 and a one-way bus ticket to their first destination.

Jesuit novices have been required to make these 30-day pilgrimages as part of their formation since the 16th century because St. Ignatius Loyola, who founded the order, wanted "candidates to feel vulnerable and to rely on God to survive and move from place to place," Hansen said.

Hansen chose to travel both sides of the United States-Mexico border to get perspective on immigration issues and to test his Spanish. He said he prayed for the grace to better understand what it means to be a radical witness to Christ in the world.

Before entering the novitiate, Hansen had spent a year in California as a Jesuit Corps volunteer helping Hispanic immigrants resolve legal issues.

His first stop was Albuquerque, N.M., where he spent 3½ days before going to his first major destination - El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, the city across the border. He spent more than a week in those cities, living part of the time at The Lord's Ranch, a Catholic community in New Mexico.

People at The Lord's Ranch, he said, "are very serious about being in solidarity with the poor. There was limited food and beds weren't as comfortable. We were asked to be conscious about the resources we used, especially water. There was a limit to the number of showers we could take."

From El Paso, he could look across the Rio Grande valley and see the poor communities in the Juarez hills. "I never expected to encounter the Third World on this pilgrimage," Hansen said. "It was a stark contrast between life in the United States and life in Mexico."

He said he had expected Juarez and Tijuana, where he went next, "to be poor cities but I never imagined anything like I saw there."

The poor people lived in one room houses made of cardboard or wooden slats. Their wooden frames often needed repair. The people told him that several generations lived in each house - grandmother, mother, children, even cousins. Many mothers are teenagers with one to three children. The fathers were absent, working or looking for work. "Some simply were not around any more," Hansen said.

"I loved the children," he said. "They would be so excited to see people come into the community and help out a little. They were so receptive and so loving. I was amazed to see how much joy and how much fun they could have with so little."

His favorite was six-year-old Jorge, whom he befriended on that first day in Juarez. The two picked up nails left at construction projects and took turns counting them in English and Spanish. Hansen taught Jorge basketball, using a flower pot set on a shelf for a basket and nails for a ball. "We had so much fun. Jorge was so full of joy. We are so unhappy here, and we have so much."

In Juarez, he also helped volunteers distribute food and visited with the residents.

His second major destination was Tijuana, near San Diego. He worked for a week at the Casa Da Los Pobres (House of the Poor), a free medical clinic and clothing store, run by Franciscan Sisters. It also serves more than 1,000 hot meals a day.

While Hansen was standing in line at the border to return to the United States from Tijuana, he had "his most moving experience." He heard someone calling him in English. It was Alexis, a nine-year-old boy he had met at Casa Da Los Probes. The youngster and his family were going to San Diego to visit relatives and get financial assistance from them.

Hansen said he was able to give them money because people had generously helped him meet travel expenses. "I had more than I needed to get back to St. Paul," he said.

In return, Alexis gave Hansen a toy ring. "He gave me the one thing he had in his possession," he said. "I was so moved by his generosity. I really felt like I was in the Scripture passage where the poor widow gave everything she had."

His pilgrimage also included 1½ days in Albuquerque with a Jesuit peace activist, packing bag lunches at a Catholic Worker house in Tucson and speaking to a class at a Jesuit high school in Phoenix about his pilgrimage.

He stayed mainly with Jesuit communities and paid for his keep by doing chores, such as washing dishes, refinishing a floor and watering fruit trees one day at The Lord's Ranch.

Hansen said his pilgrimage taught him about the disparities between life in Mexico and the United States. "There is so much more opportunity in the States that people will try to cross the border at any cost. They want to better their families' lives so they are willing to risk everything to make it here."

Personally, he said, he found, as St. Ignatius hoped, that the 30-day pilgrimage was "a very powerful spiritual experience to be incapable and to rely on God."