“Filling the ravines of our endless roads with rosaries; sacrificing food, sleeping on floors, struggling with horse saddles, bones soaked by the rain without hope of fire to dry them… all were the tools to which we entrusted the effectiveness of our projects. As a summary, I would say that sharing the poverty and other difficulties of our good people, we strove to put into practice the ancient program of the Works of Mercy, both spiritual and corporal” (Fr. Samuel Valero).

The Yauyos Prelature had been an unwanted region in the Andes when Pope Pius XII, at the request of St. Josemaria, entrusted it to Opus Dei. Fr. Ignacio Orbegozo and 10 diocesan priests from Spain arrived in Peru in 1957 to rechristanise the area. Missionaries had been there until the beginning of the 20th century, but, for some 50 years there had been no priestly attention in the region. The Indigenous Andeans, clinging in extreme poverty to the hostile valleys and ridges, demonstrated an enthusiastic, but often superstitious, vestige of Catholicism. This book tells the story of the first 15 years of the territorial prelature.

As a professional sub-editor, a penitent in a city parish cared for by priests of Opus Dei, and thanks to the translator Ximena Ovalle, I had the privilege and pleasure of proofing the English e-edition of Fr. Samuel Valero’s book, Yauyos: An Adventure in the Andes.

How doggedly these priests fought to conquer this unstable, freezing and burning, inhospitable and stunningly beautiful, geological giant of the Peruvian Andes! What was their weapon? You may learn and understand this for yourself and take it to heart, as I have done. A hint from Pope Leo XIV well describes the disposition of Opus Dei: “Treat your work and the suffering it entails like a sport. Be a very, very good sport.” 

This book, gifted by the Prelate of Opus Dei to Pope Leo XIV, is now on Amazon (here).

You can see what the prelature is like now, 60 years on, after reading the book, here.