A vehicle for a parish in the Andes

The parish of San José de Cuatro Esquinas (Saint Joseph of the Four Corners) in the Diocese of Guaranda lies at an altitude of well over 10,000 feet (3,100 m), around 8 km from the city of Guaranda, capital of Bolivar Province. It includes over 50 villages and hamlets in an area of mountains, steep hillsides, rocky outcrops, and high plateaus. It is populated almost entirely by Indigenous Peoples, who live primarily off of farming and livestock rearing. Life here is hard indeed.

Most of the 20,000 or so population are Catholics, while around 10% belong to various groups with sectarian tendencies and another 10% have no particular religious affiliation.

This is a very lively parish, with over 30 lay catechists. Some 400 children attend the regular catechism classes, while around 500 people are enrolled in the baptism preparation courses and 100 or so in the marriage preparation courses.

Somewhere between 500 and 700 people regularly attend the Sunday Masses, while many others attend only on the major feast days or during the main patronal festival. With a more intensive pastoral outreach, this number would undoubtedly be higher, but the villages are difficult to reach. While most of them do have a simple chapel, the priest is unable to visit them often enough, since he has no vehicle. There is a bus just once a day and, with the rough and metalled roads, the journey is a very long one. The alternative is to walk, however, some of the villages are up to 60 km away.

We would like to provide $36,400, so the priest can purchase a sturdy off-road vehicle, able to cope with the difficult road conditions.