By Frank Maurovich
Photos by Bro. Octavio Duran, OFM

Attracted by the roar of a low-flying DC-3, the Ashaninkas looked up to see 20 human figures descending from the sky. As the figures got closer, the indigenous people in the jungles of central Peru recognized one of them. Pointing and doubling over with laughter, they shouted, “It’s the padre.”

Father Mariano Gagnón, OFM, their pastor and an honorary member of the Sinchis.  A Peruvian version of the U.S. Green Berets, was parachuting into the mission San José de Cutivireni with  19 other Sinchis, who had volunteered to help the Franciscan missionary and the Ashaninkas finish the construction of an airstrip at the mission.
A Peruvian officer had asked Fr. Mariano to say Mass and give a talk to his paratroopers on the feast of Santa Rosa de Lima, Peru’s patron saint. Before he left the army base, Fr. Mariano’s adventurous spirit had led him, at age 40, to take part in the Sinchis training, and practice low-altitude parachute drops with them.
The admiring troopers made him their honorary chaplain—an honor all the more remarkable, since the priest was a U.S. citizen and a missionary. The incident was only one of the anomalies that has marked Fr. Mariano’s 40-year ministry with the Ashaninka people in Peru. He did it his way.
One of his ways was the missionary’s use of a wide web of influential personal contacts. Another was his reliance on airplanes. With nearly impassible roads, especially in the heavy rainy season, all sorts of aircraft—from small Cessnas to military DC-3 and helicopters—played a major role in the Cutivireni mission. In fact, one of Fr. Mariano’s bush-pilot friends proved a lifesaver for the Ashaninkas.
Now 80 years-old and looking back at his reasons for coming, Fr. Mariano explains, “I had come to evangelize the Ashaninkas, but what I found were good people living close to the land and believing in God, whom they call Tasorensi. I told them, ‘Do not ever be ashamed of your customs. You received them from Tasorensi. God loves you and does not want you to change.’ ” He adds, “I never pressured them to be baptized or to receive the Eucharist, but they came on their own to Mass and asked to be baptized and receive the other sacraments.”

New Hampshire to Peru

Born Joseph Theodore Gagnón in New Hampshire, he attributes his spirit of adventure to his parents. “It’s in my genes,” the priest claims. “My mother was French-Canadian and my father was of French and Iroquois descent.”
As a teenager, he did his high school studies at St. Joseph Seraphic Seminary in Callicoon, N.Y., the minor seminary of Holy Name Province. Restless for adventure, young  Joseph decided to join the Province of San Francisco Solano  in Peru.  He went there to complete his Franciscan formation in 1948. In novitiate he was given the name of Mariano. He was ordained in 1957.
The newly ordained friar was sent to Peru’s northeastern jungle region where he established parishes in small towns in the Franciscan Vicariate of Requena, first in Flor de Punga  and then in Santa Elena. In 1969, he joined Brother Pío Medina, an older Peruvian friar, farther south in the more remote and undeveloped mission of San José de Cutivireni, due east across the Andes from Lima.
Of the 20,000 Ashaninkas who live in Peru’s jungle region, about 5,000 lived in the tropical Ene River valley in the vicinity of the Cutivireni mission, located between the towering Andes Mountains in the west and the formidable Vilcabamba range on the east. For Fr. Mariano, it was love at first sight. He later compared his ministry with the Ashaninkas, to finding the Gospel’s “pearl of great price.” He said, “I feel an immense gratitude to Almighty God for my vocation.”
Soon after the missionary arrived, he began utilizing his web of contacts to help the indigenous people. In addition to the support of the Province, the web included wealthy Peruvian patrons and politicians in Lima, U.S. and Peruvian Air Force officers and U.S. embassy personnel.
The mission grew steadily, but after a decade of relative peace, trouble began brewing in the early 1980’s. The radical Shining Path, Maoist revolutionaries, bent on overthrowing the Peruvian government, began wooing Ashaninkas into their ranks and condemning missionaries as imperialists intending to enslave indigenous people. At the same time, drug traffickers increased their dealings with migrant Quechua coca growers in the area and began using the river and mission airfield to haul processed cocaine in speedboats and light planes.
In 1984, Ashaninka renegades, who had joined the Maoist terrorists, attacked and set fire to Cutivireni mission buildings. The attack made it too dangerous for Bro. Pío and the four sisters, who ran the clinic and school, to stay. Fr. Mariano not only stayed but with the financial aid, mostly from his Peruvian friends in Lima, rebuilt the entire mission within two years.
Three years later, when the missionary was away on a trip to the United States, 60 well-armed rebels attacked again and this time executed 21 Catholic Ashaninkas, including the savage crucifixion of Fr. Mariano’s main catechist before setting fire again to mission buildings. Seven hundred Ashaninkas who lived in or near the mission fled into the jungle.
Some said the priest had been foolish to rebuild while the terrorist threat was still prevalent; others maintained that rebuilding was a sign to the Ashaninkas that the Church had not abandoned them. Nonetheless, the natives did not return to Cutivireni but found refuge in Tinkarini at the end of a narrow canyon. When terrorists attacked Tinkarini, the Ashaninkas, using bows and arrows and other weapons, set an ambush that killed 18 terrorists.
Fr. Mariano returned to Peru and rejoined the Ashaninkas, who were trying to keep one jump ahead of the terrorists, now bent on revenge for their fallen comrades. The missionary accompanied his people to Cubeja, and then trekked with 44 families, including 32 children under six, some of whom were nursing infants, across rugged terrain on a five-day march to Tzibokiroato, where they found refuge on a mountain plateau. Other Ashaninkas joined them there, and the refugees set about building huts, planting yucca and clearing land on the cliff-side for a precarious airstrip.
With reports that a band of Maoist terrorists were slowly advancing toward Tzibokiroato, Fr. Mariano worked out a plan with the Ashaninka elders to airlift the 300 settlers to the other side of the 14,000-ft. Vilcabamba Mountains to the Urubamba region, far out of range of the terrorists. To do this, he enlisted the services of Armando Velarde Torres and his Cessna OB-1044. Flying non-stop in two-and-a-half days of daylight, pausing only to refuel, the expert bush pilot negotiated the primitive airstrip and delivered the refugees to the welcome embrace of their Machiguenga cousins and to Dominican Father Adolfo’s mission in Kiriketi.
On a final flight, Armando flew Fr. Mariano to Kiriketi where he celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving with his Ashaninka parishioners who now would be cared for by Fr. Adolfo and the Dominicans. The next morning, the priest watched as the Ashaninkas boarded boats furnished by Fr.  Adolfo to head up the Pavoreni River to settle in their new homeland. With tears in his eyes, Fr. Mariano, like  a new Moses, waved goodbye and watched the boats disappear around a bend in the river, taking his people to their new Promised Land.

This article was published in the Fall Issue 2009 of the Anthonian magazine   ©2009 St. Anthony's Guild