Panama Bleeds: A Story of Persecution and Perseverance

It is hard for those who live outside the region to grasp how decadent the Church in Latin America is, and how much its bishops hate tradition

A traditional Catholic activist in Panama sent me the following report on what is happening in his country, and gave me permission to edit it and share it with my readers. It’s important for those of us who live in countries where the Latin Mass is more plentifully available to learn about the hardships of our brethren who are suffering under bishops even more cruel and heterodox than many of our own (+Wilton Gregory included), and to be thus reminded to pray for them. The photos and captions were provided by the author.—PAK

December 13, 2020: First Holy Mass with the SSPX, in an apartment into which more than 100 people tried to fit.

The lack of representative news

There is a famous movie for children where one of the characters says “Look beyond what you see.” This brings the audience to reflect on what it might mean to see farther than what is in plain sight or obvious within our surroundings. This advice can be applied to any part of our lives, but specifically it has a Counter-Revolutionary meaning, since the Catholic should strive to look beyond the false panorama the Revolution has implanted as our usual, typical, and constant environment.

It is a known occurrence that within traditional Catholic groups, circles, or congregations (be they laity or clergy), there is a “keeping up to date” with the news that touches upon the usual topics of interest for them that happen in familiar places of the world. Just to give a few examples: many know about what happened in Tyler, Texas, with the brave and holy Bishop Strickland; photos of the event in Spain, the Covadonga pilgrimage a few months ago, attracted the attention of many; the Catholic Identity Conference in Pittsburgh instructed many listeners from all around the world; and no one can fail to take note of the late-October Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage, where representatives from across the Christian world come together in Rome, with much presence on social media.

All of this is truly great and astounding: the Counter-Revolution is surging ahead! But this sort of “attention monopoly” of certain places, events, and individuals could be said to be accidentally damaging to other places in Christendom. I know that this damage is not intentional; certain big events and news stories and platforms simply command more attention and spread more quickly through familiar channels. Many traditionalists can easily find out “how Tradition is going” in the US, UK, Europe (in general), and certain other countries; however, does anyone have any idea what is happening in Latin America, Africa, or Asia? Do traditionalists have anything more than a vague idea of the situation of the Church in these regions? On another occasion, we could expand on this topic of “unintentional ignorance” of the advance of the Counter-Revolution in other regions, but right now I will focus only on the country of Panama.

An entire book could (and hopefully will) be written about the epic of the Counter-Revolution in the country where I live. We will summarize it in the following paragraphs. Panama is a small country in Latin America and is famous for the Panama Canal. This country may be small, insignificant, and not all that important in the advance of the Counter-Revolution around the world, yet the situation here is rather significant—arguably a microcosm of the whole—and traditionalists can learn much from it.