Guest lecturer in Davenport has connection to Leo XIV

By Dan Russo
The Catholic Messenger

DAVENPORT — A prominent Peruvian sociologist, theologian and political figure with a unique personal connection to Pope Leo XIV recently served as a guest lecturer at a formation course for Spanish-speaking lay Cath­olics in the Diocese of Davenport.

José Luis Pérez Guadalupe taught two day-long sessions over the last several months as part of the education program sponsored by the Diocesan Office of Multicultural Ministry.

“There’s two points I wanted to touch on — synodality in the Catholic Church and the other part would be the reality of the religious life of Catholics in Latin American and Latino Catholics in the United States,” said Pérez Guadalupe. “There’s a decrease in general in the number of people in the Catholic Church, but an increase in the Latino Catholic community in the United States. My focus in the lay formation classes is to teach Hispanic Catholics that as the population in the Church changes, Hispanic Catholics are going to be called upon to take more of a leadership role in the Catholic Church in the United States.”

Guadalupe met Miguel Moreno, diocesan director of Multicultural Ministry, while they were both theology students at the same university in Peru. Their longstanding friendship is part of the reason the professor, who now teaches at Universidad del Pacifico, a private Catholic institution in Lima, made the journey. He also spoke at the office’s Eucharistic Revival event June 29 at St. Patrick Parish in Iowa City. One of his focuses while in the United States over the last three months was to examine the issue of Venezuelan refugees here. His country of roughly 34 million people has seen a massive influx of about two million refugees from the nearby country, following an economic crisis.

“I worked for the Catholic Church for more than 20 years,” said Pérez Guadalupe. “Overall, in social and pastoral care and teaching, but specifically, I did pastoral care in jails and prisons for 40 years. In Peru, we received a lot of Venezuelan prisoners. In 2018 we had, 15 prisoners from Venezuela. Right now, we have more than 4,000.”

Pérez Guadalupe has published many books, including “El Tren de Aragua,” which examines organized crime in his country and South America generally. His nation is experiencing some upheaval due to immigration, like the United States. He says the Latin American approach to immigration is a bit different.

“The work of the state is very small,” he said. “The work the Catholic Church is doing much more. In Latin American countries, they don’t treat immigration violations as criminal offenses. They consider it ‘irregular’ immigration, not ‘illegal.’”

Pérez Guadalupe’s long career has also included government service. It was then that he had his first direct encounter with Father Robert Francis Prevost, the priest originally from Chicago, who would become Pope Leo XIV. After serving as a top administrator in the nation’s prison system,  on Feb. 17, 2015 Pérez Guadalupe was sworn in as the seventh Minister of the Interior of President Ollanta Humala’s government. The Minister of the Interior is responsible for ensuring internal security in Peru, as well as overseeing the National Police of Peru, according to Pérez Guadalupe’s official biography.  Any public official of the Peruvian state can send a letter to the Minister requesting police protection, it says.

In 2015, Pope Francis made Father Prevost, who had done years of missionary work in Peru, into a bishop. In order to serve, the future pope would have to become a Peruvian citizen.

“When I was interior minister, I got a call from the Peruvian bishop’s conference to help Father Robert in becoming a bishop,” recalled Pérez Guadalupe. “They needed my signature and after me, it was the president’s.”

Pérez Guadalupe’s name is on the Peruvian documents that made the pope a citizen of that nation. In 2018, Pérez Guadalupe again worked with Bishop Prevost during Pope Francis’ 2018 visit.

“The Peru bishop’s conference called and asked me to work with them to organize the visit,” said Pérez Guadalupe. “I got to know the bishops and I know commanders in the police force. We visited the Vatican and all the different cities where the pope was going to be.  I was in charge of security for the bishops who were there at the time.”

Pérez Guadalupe remembers the current pope as someone with a sense of humor and a love for God.

“For me, he’s a pope that was born in Chicago, but he was made in Peru a bishop,” said the professor. “He united three worlds very well — the United States, Latin America and Europe. His personality is Peruvian; the way he cooks is Peruvian. In Latin America, we like to share our food. It’s very important.”

Pérez Guadalupe holds a degree in Social Sciences from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and in Education from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He is also a canonical graduate and has a master’s degree in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical and Civil Faculty of Theology of Lima. Since 1986, he has worked as a prison pastoral agent at the Lurigancho prison. He has conducted a series of research studies in the penitentiary and criminological fields, both in Peru and Chile. He was glad to share his talents with the people of the Davenport Diocese.

“I’ve gone to other, bigger states in the United States and here in Davenport, Iowa it’s a bit of paradise because it is more calm and relaxed,” said Pérez Guadalupe. “The people are friendly. They say hello to you. People of very welcoming …I came for a long time and I came for the first time with my wife. We were very welcomed in general and especially in the Hispanic community.”

(Veronica Tapia, administrative assistant for the multicultural ministry of the Diocese of Davenport, provided translation.)