19 november 2003
CAM part/03

Rev. F. Jack Warner S. I.
El Progreso

        Dear Fr. Warner:

        When I received here in the curia the 2004 calendar of la fragua I realized that this year you are celebrating your silver anniversary. And my spontaneous reaction is to write you offering my sincere congratulations for this work, the fruit of many sleepless nights; a work which has done so much good, awakened so much commitment, and produced so much beauty.

        To those who are not familiar with your work - and in that phrase I include the contributions of your many collaborators over the course of this quarter century - perhaps my expressions might seem a bit exaggerated. But I am aware that you have constructed this reality from nothing - desde la nada - and much of the time with little collaboration and support. Your work has the enormous merit of inculturating contemporary theatre technique into the primal reality of the towns and villages of Honduras, without sacrificing aesthetic quality or communicative power. And I can't leave out the creativity involved in making of teatro la fragua a highly tuned instrument of explicit evangelization by means of the Bibilical dramatizations which have enjoyed enormous success among the pueblo and have elicited considerable admiration among theatre professionals. The calendar which you sent me is a good synthesis of these 25 years of continuous effort.

        Carlos Mario Castro is right on the mark when he points out that theatre has been a pastoral instrument of the Society of Jesus for centuries. Your work is solidly within the Jesuit tradition, as is your creative renovation of that tradition in the light of the Central American reality.

        For all of this I give thanks to God: the Lord has given you great artistic gifts and you have found the way to put those gifts at the service of the pueblo, and especially of the poorest and most marginalized sectors of the pueblo. Without doubt the Spirit will fill your heart with consolation which will continue to lead you to the "greater service, praise and glory of God."

        With all my affection and esteem in the Lord, I send my blessing to you and all your collaborators of teatro la fragua.

Christ was the greatest of the artists... But he didn't bother with marble and clay and paintings; he preferred to mould his works from the living flesh of human beings. He didn't create statues or paintings or poems. He created immortal beings, and he created the instruments which men and women could use to make of their lives a perfect and beautiful work of art.

Mario Vargas Llosa, Paradise on the Next Corner