Trócaire: living Populorum Progressio through its actions

By Stephen Farley

As I stood in the middle of the Dixie Bordos, a riverside slum in San Pedro Sula (SPS), I was struck by the complexity of the problems facing the residents of this extremely impoverished community. SPS is a dangerous place to live. It is second only to Caracas in Venezuela when it comes to homicide rates in large cities (111.03 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 20151), and gang violence is a part of daily life for the many hundreds of families that live in the Dixie Bordos and others around the city.

Extreme poverty is the norm here. Every family struggles to scratch out an existence in this precarious location. On one side is the river, heavily polluted with visible rubbish and refuse, plus no doubt unseen dangers due to the untreated sewage from homes and factories pumping into the river all day long. On the other side is a crisp factory, the source of much of the pollution, pumped through pipes that run underneath the homes of the inhabitants and straight into the river.

If the residents were asked to rank the problems they face in order of severity, no doubt poverty, gang violence, the health risks from the river, and lack of opportunities would be among the main issues. However, there is another force at play here that makes their lives even more vulnerable; Climate Change. Honduras is one of the countries most affected by climate change, in particular extreme weather events. Taking into account casualties and GDP losses, Honduras was the worst- affected country in the world by the impacts of extreme weather events in the period from 1993 to 2012.2

The Dixie slum, and other poor areas in SPS, are regularly flooded by the heavy rainfall from the storms that affect Honduras and other countries in this part of Central America. Local residents do their best to cope, getting involved in emergency committees and putting in place evacuation plans. However, they are hampered by the other problems they face, as well as a lack of training and funds. Try giving instructions to gang members that they must evacuate their turf, it is not an easy sell.

Trócaire, the overseas development agency of the in Ireland, works with local partners in northern Honduras to help support the residents of Dixie slum, and others, in their efforts to deal with the myriad problems they face on a daily basis. The local people know what they need to do, people like Javier, a resident of Choloma in northern Honduras, who helped to produce a risk map to identify the most vulnerable areas, and people, in his neighbourhood, and design evacuation plans for when the inevitable floods happen.

Trócaire supports organisations and communities in Honduras and around the world, to develop their lives in the best way they can, according to their customs and beliefs. Trócaire came into being

1 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/worlds-50-most-dangerous-cities-revealed-a6836416.html 2 trocaire.org/sites/default/files/resources/policy/honduras-climate-change-case-study.pdf accessed 10/03/17 in 1973, partly as a response to Pope Paul VI and his 1967 ‘Populorum Progressio’, which introduced the concept of integral human development to Catholic congregations around the world.

“Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man.”

The idea of integral human development has been central to the social teaching of the Catholic Church throughout the period of time since ‘Populorum Progressio’ was released. It is also an idea that is important to other faiths and religions, and in the 1987 encyclical , Pope John Paul II identified that integral human development is best approached in an ecumenical way.

“In this pursuit of Integral Human Development we can also do much with the members of other religions. Collaboration in the development of the whole person and of every human being is in fact a duty of all towards all, and must be shared by the four parts of the world: East and West, North and South.”

More recently, in his 2015 encyclical ‘Laudato Sí’ speaks about the idea of integral ecology as the best approach to address the problems facing people in the 21st century:

“Since everything is closely interrelated, and today’s problems call for a vision capable of taking into account every aspect of the global crisis, I suggest that we now consider some elements of an integral ecology, one which clearly respects its human and social dimensions.”

Pope Francis asserts that the environmental dimension is equally as important as economic, social and cultural considerations. Integral ecology also addresses other principles of , such as justice (in particular intergenerational justice), , and being stewards of the earth.

Trócaire’s work with partners and beneficiaries in our programme countries embraces integral human development as the best way to approach our work. Our move towards an integrated programme approach in recent times is further testament to our commitment to the modern view of human development, whilst also staying true to the message of Pope Paul VI in ‘Populorum Progressio’, a document correctly lauded as one of the most important in our own development as an overseas development agency.

For the residents of the Dixie bordos in SPS, and for people like Javier in Choloma, Trócaire’s support can make a massive difference in their lives. However, it is support that must be driven by the needs of the people who live in these vulnerable communities, which means taking a holistic view of development, and ensuring that the principle of integral human development is central to the lived experience of Trócaire staff, partners and beneficiaries.