Father Alban Quinn, O.Carm.

Appeared in El Comercio Newspaper, Lima, Peru, October 27, 2006. Translated By: Father Charles Countie, O.Carm.

Carmelite Father Alban Quinn has put aside his cane at the directions of Oscar Roca, our photographer. It is Tuesday noontime, a beautiful warm, sun-filled day and it is almost hot, really too hot to wear a habit, but Father Alban has put it on at my insistence.

The photo session is prolonged for twenty minutes by a search for the best shot, not at the altar but in one of the pews of the Church.

His hair is now all gray and venerable wrinkles reflect his 82 years. Each time the camera takes a picture it awakens in him something that makes him seem younger. It is as if each click of the camera has the ability to take They Call Me Carmelite away the years and bring us back to the handsome young priest of long ago, who 59 years ago came to establish a parish in Miraflores, in Lima, Peru. It lasts but a moment, but shows us that time has been very fair with him. If time has caused the breakdown of the body, it could not diminish his wonderful simplicity and good spirits.

Now at 82 years of age, Father Alban refuses to rest. He continues here at the parish speaking with us, letting us take his picture, like a child who does not want to come in after recess.

The Groups of the Neighborhood

Oscar Roca and I form part of the Alumni of the Carmelita’s. He was in the first graduating class, and I (Renato Cisneros) from the 26th. When we found out that Father Alban would be in Miraflores to inaugurate the next fifty years of our school we could not let the opportunity to see him, and the places which we know so well, pass by.

In the history of the Carmelites in Peru, he has the place of legend, and even more he is the only one left of the three fathers who came in 1949, and founded the first parish of the Carmelite Order in Peru. We believe that his memory is a kind of black box which holds the collected memories of long ago.

With Father Matthew O’Neil and Father Leon Battle, Father Alban was received by the then Archbishop of Lima, Juan Gilberta Guervara. The Order was given the desert area of the nearby urbanization of San Antonio in the Lima district of Miraflores.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Lima began to transform itself as a result of various waves of immigrants from the mountains to the area called San Antonio. It was a desert-like area, mostly rural, with only a train passing through. Rail lines extended from the center of Lima out into the country towns to the south, where the emerging middle class sought out the beaches and fresh air.

“I thought we had come to a farming area that had a few homes and a landscape full of crops,” said Father Alban, who, after living more than fifty years in Peru has adopted Peruvian nationality but still has his Canadian English accent.

The three friars moved to San Antonio at the end of 1954 when the parish church construction was almost completed. The work of the Fathers increased with the rapid growth of the district. Their new neighbors found them to be an oddity and even somewhat exotic. At the time, it was not common to see a bunch of young gringos, some said, “very good looking and unusually tall,” Even today Father Alban stands at six feet, three inches tall. According to those who remember them best, “these priests from Chicago were like actors from Hollywood.”

Little by little the priests were integrating themselves completely into the life of the neighborhood and this modern parish plant (school, priory, parish church and sister’s convent) soon became the most important geographic center of the barrio. The lighthouse, around which dozens of families of San Antonio related to each other and, as it were, formed a parish family.

A Different Style

Maybe because they came from another country and their personalities were so open, the Carmelite friars had a very different style from the norm of a very conservative Lima.

They won over the people and ceased to be merely the priests of the neighborhood, but rather became the friends of the people. They attended to the people 24 hours a day, took good care of the sick, worked with the housemaids and gardeners, formed prayer groups, organized cooking classes and without realizing it breathed fresh air into the life of a neighborhood which otherwise could have been very boring.

Father Alban judged part of the success of their work to the closeness that they had with the young people who met at the parish. They at first saw the priests with a bit of reserve.

“When they saw a priest without the religious habit playing basketball and other sports, and then sit down and have a smoke with them or even share a beer, we priests became accepted as friends,” said Father Alban with a nostalgic smile.

It was just this attitude which made the young parents, all graduates of good Catholic schools, want to build a school which would contain this same open spirit and sense of belonging.

“‘We didn’t know how to confront the problem. We had to study it, because we had not come to be teachers, and moreover we didn’t know how to finance the project,” added Father Alban.

Even so the classes began in April of 1956, thanks to the cooperation of generous donations from fifty families who agreed to pay in advance for the education of their children. At first it opened as a boy’s grammar school, but in 1964 it became one of the first schools to become co-ed.

In the afternoon, the school was opened for the poor children who were educated without tuition. A while later the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary from Philadelphia came to the school. These sisters were famous for their effective methods of discipline.

The Mystery of Friendship

Fifty years after the foundation, Father Alban Quinn speaks of our school as if it were a child he has seen develop and finally grow to maturity. “I feel very happy and satisfied, the grammar and high schools are the result of the cooperative work of the entire parish community, Carmelite friars and enthusiastic parents,” he said.

Father Alban, you have every right to feel that way. Anyone who has come under the influence of the Carmelites has to admit that the school and parish are a cause of great pride for us all. The classes, the teachers, the activities, the celebration of feasts, the parish bazaars, the playing fields, the coming together and fraternity. It is as if the Carmelites gave not only a chance to learn, but above all, the opportunity to belong to something bigger.

I do not know exactly what the cause of this sentiment is. I believe that it is a combination of many factors. Even now, after so many years, when one passes by the park, the parish church or the grammar school or high school, one feels as if he is walking through the living room in his own home.

Thank you friars of Carmel!