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By Luis Orlando Perez Jimenez SJ

Fr Luis, who led the SPARK retreat day on Saturday, also did an event just for SPARK members on Friday evening – a ‘Conversation of Hope’ which was had over a meal at a community centre in Headingley in Leeds.

The focus on Friday evening was to hear from Fr Luis Orlando Pérez Jiménez SJ, who shared how his work as a lawyer at the Jesuit Human Rights Centre in Mexico City had deepened his spirituality and understanding of sustaining hope and building resilience. Fr Luis spoke of how the voices of hundreds of women, whose children have been forcibly taken, are the channels of hope and God’s grace in our world today. 

(The following is an extract from one of the talks given by Fr Luis Orlando during the SPARK retreat day at Hinsley Hall on 11 October 2025)

Over the past sixteen years, more than one hundred and thirty thousand people have gone missing in my country. One hundred and thirty thousand lives — and behind each of them, a family, a mother, a story. The disappearance of people began to rise sharply when the then-President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, declared a “war on drugs” in 2006 — a war that two more presidents have continued. This war has been promoted and financed by the government of the United States.

And what has been the outcome? A country filled with pain, fear, and violence unlike anything seen in modern Mexican history — and all of it unfolding in what was supposed to be a time of democratic openness.

Those who tend to disappear are poor people, young people, often between sixteen and thirty years old, living in marginalised neighbourhoods. It is happening across the whole country. The groups responsible for these disappearances are of two kinds: people who work for the Mexican state — police, soldiers — and members of organised crime. And often, both sides collaborate. They protect one another and, together, maintain a system of almost total impunity.

Hundreds of mothers have come together in groups to search for their loved ones. One of them is Doña María Herrera, whose two sons — Raúl and Jesús Salvador — disappeared in 2008. While she was still demanding their return, two more — Gustavo and Luis Armando — were also taken in 2010.

Now in her seventies, Doña María has spent more than a decade speaking out with unshakable faith in God.

A few years ago, I accompanied her to a meeting with a bishop and several priests. She reminded them of the parable of the Good Shepherd — the shepherd who leaves his flock to search for the one sheep that is lost.

And then she asked,

“If you are shepherds, why have you not gone out to look for the sheep who are missing?”

There was silence in the room — a heavy, uncomfortable silence. No one dared to answer. Doña María said,

“God is the first to go searching. God goes out not knowing where to begin, but still goes. That’s how we started too.”

I have reflected deeply on her words. Perhaps through Doña María’s voice — and through the voices of hundreds of mothers like her — God is speaking to us, just as He once spoke through the prophets of the old testament.

To “search,” in their experience, means organising spaces to share knowledge, to learn how to find their missing sons and daughters. These women see themselves as co-workers with the Good Shepherd, searching for His lost sheep.

Through this work, these mothers have moved from distrust to rebuilding social trust, and above all, to sustaining hope.

I believe the key reason these mothers can keep hope alive is their encounter with God, made real through the presence of people of goodwill — those who choose to accompany them, to stand by them.

In our extended mass in the afternoon, Fr Luis commented on the Gospel reading, which was the story of the Visitation.

Like Mary, that young woman from Nazareth, who, as the Gospel tells us, “set out as quickly as she could” to visit Elizabeth in the hill country. What a beautiful image.

Mary goes to meet Elizabeth because she is full of God — full of His Spirit. She moves because she allows God to move within her. In other words, Mary is open to being led by that “Spirit from above.”

And that encounter — that meeting — changes everything.

The act of setting out, of letting someone wait for you, already begins to build relationship.

There is a quiet beauty in waiting — in preparing to receive another person — and then, the meeting itself: a greeting, a cup of tea, a roof and a table. Nothing extravagant.

Again, the Spirit of God is simple and grounded. It goes straight to what matters most.

Imagine Elizabeth’s joy — not in gifts or grand gestures, but in Mary’s presence before her. Two women meeting, two friends, their hope resting in God’s promise to transform their lives.

Mary’s prayer — the Magnificat — overflows with gratitude. It draws our eyes toward those who suffer, toward those whose faces are hard to meet: the children starving in Gaza, the mothers in Ukraine mourning their sons, many of them now widows.

And when their faces meet ours, what can we say?

What prayer rises from our hearts?

Where is that Spirit from above calling us to go?

We will be publishing the full text of Fr Luis Orlando’s talk as a small downloadable booklet – keep an eye on our website if this is of interest to you.