A Look at Evangelization

Sylvaana Udz

The book is an in-depth look at evangelization dating back to 1524 and was funded by the German Bishops Foundation, Holy Redeemer Credit Union, as well as the Institute for Social and Cultural Research Research, among others.

Sylvaana Udz, Co-author, Years of Grace

“Years of Grace begins as a story in 1524 when Ferdinand and Isabella were sending out the explorers, always with a priest.  But that didn’t last, the priests were itinerant and the Maya were very smart, they kept telling the priests, “Oh no, we don’t have gold here, you have to go up to Peten”.  Alright, and so we had these Franciscan and Dominican friars next, but it was in 1832, after the Anglicans, Wesleyans and Baptists had been here that in fact the permanent presence of Catholicism began with the Jesuits.  And it really was a group of about two hundred and fifty Catholics in Belize City, merchants who were just fed with some of the, shall we say, excess and outlandishness of some of the Yucatecan priests who had come over during the Caste War.  Not all now, just a few and they got Father du Perron to send down a group and Father Avaro and the rest established the first permanent presence of Roman Catholicism.  The Catholics went out into the bush, they went, nothing stopped them from spreading the word of the Lord.  And what has transpired is the word of the Lord is not just this think in a book, it‘s in you Isani.  This is what I get out of it.  It’s in me, it’s in everybody.  If I can find God in somebody I have found God.  And that is how this book has changed my life and I feel privileged to have been a part of the research.  Of course it goes through the credit union movement, you heard the speakers today.  It’s a history of the geopolitics of Belize, the labor riot influenced by a whole part of the rarum navarum and the social justice movement and the call to social justice that the adult education classes of Father O’Donnell and some of the other earlier missionaries held.”

Years of Grace retails for forty dollars and all proceeds from sales go to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Belize City & Belmopan.