Out of a global crisis comes a divine blessing

He had experienced several hardships as a child. His father, a widower with one daughter, remarried a few years after his wife’s death. When Luis was 7, his father died, leaving Luis’ stepsister Jacinta, who was 12 years older, to handle a lot of the babysitting duties.
    

“I used to consider her mean because she was so strict with me,” Luis said. “When you’re that age and they tell you, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that,’ you consider them mean.”
    

Jacinta eventually married, and because of their wide age difference and separate lives, their only interactions came on rare social occasions. 
    

Luis was 23 when he fell in love at first sight with Adelina. They had been married for six years when he came to New Orleans on a one-month vacation in 1966 to visit his mother and brother.
    

Back home in Tela, Honduras, Luis drove a delivery truck for an airline. But, the more he talked to his mother and brother, Luis began dreaming about what life might be like for himself and his young family in a land of promise, freedom and industry.
    

And then, over a few beers, he met “Mr. Tony” Corona, who ran an auto parts shop on Magazine Street and who needed a mechanic.
    

When Luis went back to Honduras, a telegram was waiting for him, advising him to go to the U.S. Counsel’s office to get a temporary worker’s pass to Louisiana. Luis knew right then he had to stake a claim for a new life.
    

Speaking virtually no English, Luis returned to New Orleans and in nine months had saved up enough money to bring Adelina and their three children to the U.S. In the early 1970s, he worked as a diesel mechanic for Jahncke Services, the company that poured the cement for the Louisiana Superdome.
    

Luis and his family were living in Kenner at the time and looking for a church. Fifteen blocks away was St. Jerome, so they decided to attend Mass there one day. They sat in the back pew. When it came time for the sign of peace, no one turned around to offer them so much as a wave.
    

Humiliated, Campuzano wanted to vote with his feet.
    

On Monday, Luis was working on a diesel engine when a man in a Ford LTD as long as a battleship pulled into the Jahncke parking lot.
    

“And everybody starts saying, ‘The Big Chief comes to the office just when he’s going to fire somebody,’” Luis said. “And, to my surprise, they call my name on the intercom to come to the office. Everybody’s asking me, ‘What did you do wrong, Luis?’”
    

In the office, his supervisor introduced him to the man driving the LTD.
    

“I saw you at St. Jerome yesterday,” the man named Mr. Bob said.
    

When Luis explained to him what had happened and that he was going to be looking for another church, the man said: “Oh, no, no, no – you’re not leaving St. Jerome.”
    

“Even with my broken English, he took care of me,” Luis said. “He got me involved with the Knights of Columbus.”
    

As Luis’ parish participation grew, he directed the 12-member Spanish choir when it sang for Masses that were celebrated in a parish classroom converted into a small chapel. One day, Father Ken Ryan, the pastor, announced that the archdiocese was looking for Spanish-speaking men to become permanent deacons.
    

“In my mind, I was thinking about who in the room could do it,” Luis said. “I didn’t know what a deacon was. I was kneeling down, praying – ‘Who in the choir could do it?’ – and when I raised my head up, almost every member of the choir pointed at me. I got down on my knees and said, ‘Lord, if you’re calling me, my English is not good, but here I am.’”
    

The four years of study leading to his 1996 ordination were strenuous because of his English deficiencies. He bought a tape recorder and brought it to class so he could go over the lectures, time after time.
    

“I was driving everyone crazy with the noise,” Luis said. “My wife kept telling me, ‘You’re doing it wrong. You’re going to go crazy, and you’re driving us crazy!’”
  

Luis stubbornly pressed on. Assigned to write an eight-page theological reflection, he labored all weekend to complete six. Adelina kept asking him to stop and join her and the family at the park. Luis said he would come later – not now – when everyone was there.
    

When the telephone call from his wife came, Luis reluctantly said he would join them.
    

“I touched the computer and lost everything,” Luis recalled. “I was fussing at my wife, ‘You see what you did? They’re going to toss me out of the program.’”
    

After cooling off, Luis came back from the park and, relaxed, dashed off a two-page paper. After turning it in, Luis said his teacher, Msgr. Ignatius Roppolo, asked if he could make a copy to share with the entire class.
    

“He was serious,” Luis said. “He said, ‘You did better than anyone who did 13 pages. That first work you did was your work. This is the work of the Holy Spirit.’”
 

Lifetime of forgiveness
    

Luis and Adelina were married for 51 years when she took ill and was approaching death. “We had our ups and downs, like anyone else,” Luis said. “But we were very happy.”
    

After Mass one morning in 2012, Luis brought Adelina Communion in her hospital room.
    

“I told her, ‘Sweetheart, I brought Jesus with me so that we could share him,’” Luis said. “So, we started praying. The moment before I gave her Communion, holding the Blessed Sacrament in my hands, I told her, ‘Sweetheart, here in front of Jesus, I thank God for giving me such a beautiful woman, a great wife, a great mother, a great friend.
 

“‘Sweetheart, in 51 years, we’ve had some good times, bad times and very, very good times. Some of the bad times were caused by me, maybe by ignorance, secondly by intention or thirdly because of miscommunication. For all those bad times that I have caused you, here, in front of Jesus, I want you to forgive me. And, I forgive you for any bad times you have given me for any reason.’”
    

It has been eight years since Adelina passed away on May 7, 2012.
 

Blessed Mother started it all
    

Luis is now 83, and even though he is retired, he still serves as a permanent deacon at St. Jerome Church. On Feb. 3, 2019 – the Feast of Our Lady of Suyapa, the patroness of Honduras – Deacon Luis assisted at the Mass and joined in the fellowship of the Honduran community at Holy Guardian Angels Church in Bridge City.
    

He had not returned to Honduras to visit his family since March 1983, when violence was so bad that his step sister Jacinta told him it was too dangerous for him to return.
    

“You’d better not come anymore because your life is threatened,” she told him. “I’d rather know you are alive and doing good rather than bringing you flowers to the cemetery.” 
    

Because of the civil unrest, since that time – for nearly 40 years – Deacon Luis had not communicated with Jacinta. She had moved and he had no trace of her whereabouts or phone number.
    
At the feast day Mass for Our Lady of Suyapa in 2019, a young woman approached Deacon Luis and asked if he was related to Gilfred Campuzano. Stunned, Deacon Luis told her Gilfred was his nephew, Jacinta’s son. The woman told him she and Gilfred had been classmates for four years at the Instituo Triunfo de la Cruz (Triumph of the Cross) in Honduras.     

So, last December, Deacon Luis got a text message with pictures of Jacinta, now 95, and his two nieces and a nephew.
    

“That was the best gift from my Lord,” Deacon Luis said.
    

With the Archdiocese of New Orleans livestreaming Masses due to the pandemic, Deacon Luis told his sister and her family that he would be preaching at the Mass on the Third Sunday of Easter, when Jesus was made known to the disciples in the breaking of the bread.
    

It was almost as if Deacon Luis were back in that hospital room, again, speaking to his wife and sharing the Eucharist.
    

From their home in Honduras, Jacinta saw Deacon Luis preach for the first time.
    

“She’s deaf, so she can’t really hear what I’m saying,” Deacon Luis said. “My relatives were there and they said, ‘Uncle, you’re old, and when you got on your knees, you had to hold on to the chair to get back up.’ And I said, ‘What do you expect from an 83-year-old man?’
    

“I do pray that Jacinta and I will see each other again. But if we stick together and seek the Lord, we’re going to meet in heaven, and, there, nobody will separate us.”
    

As soon as the pandemic restrictions loosen and it is safe to travel, Deacon Luis plans to hop on a plane to Honduras.
    

“I want to tell her I love her and ask her to forgive me for being away all this time and not realizing she was a part of my life,” Deacon Luis said. “This was the best gift the Lord could ever give me.”
    

It happened during a pandemic.
    

“What a blessing,” he said. “We’ve got to keep looking for those blessings.”
    

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].