Poverty, mental illness and hopelessness trap a mother and her family in an intolerable life.
By Fr. Leo Donnelly

Julia had so much on her plate it was unreal. It was unreal she just didn’t commit suicide or become a prostitute to make ends meet. So many poverty-stricken women like her do. Julia had more than enough reason to hate men sufficiently to take vengeance and humiliate them. But she never did. She stayed on with her life and bore her heavy cross.

I have often wondered what the poor, especially the more desperate people like Julia, carry inside themselves that keeps them going. It has to be tied to our shared faith and Jesus Christ’s identification with human suffering.

Perhaps a tiny indication of this in Julia herself was the unusual name she gave her eldest child: Gospel. That name I do remember.

One morning, Julia appeared in the parish desperately needing help. Gospel had come home by escaping from the mental hospital by simply walking out the gate. Julia was looking for help to take Gospel back and help her readmit him as a patient.

The family was living in a ragged old bamboo shack perched among the rocks. It had to be one of the poorest areas in what was a pretty poor parish at that time.

As the two of us scrambled up the side of the hill, Gospel was sitting on the stoop before heading inside as we drew near. We followed him in, but Gospel was standing in the house carrying a carving knife, which kind of cooled my enthusiasm to help.

I read it as a fair enough indication he had no intention of allowing anyone, least of all a priest, cart him back to the hospital.

Julia and I headed to the local police station where she explained her problem to the officer in charge and begged for his intervention. So an older police sergeant, Julia and I drove back to the home in our parish car.

Again Gospel was on the stoop, and again he went inside. He hid under the bed. The sergeant couldn’t convince Gospel to come out, and as he was aware of the carving knife, he wasn’t going in under the bed after him.

The sergeant said to Gospel, “Come on, there’s a good soccer game at the stadium. Let’s you and I go.” That lured Gospel out.

Julia’s Story
It was on the drive to the hospital that I learned some of Julia’s story. She had had the father of her children jailed for sexual intercourse with their eldest girl. He wasn’t held long in jail, and once out he threatened her life for having denounced him.

She had found another male companion, perhaps in self-protection, but he, too, was a disaster. She said she was working as a live-in domestic servant way across town, Monday through Saturday, and that by the time the owners had deducted her room and board, she barely had enough money for the children to support themselves during the week.

She would return home only on Sundays and spent the day washing and preparing school uniforms as well as cooking and cleaning. They lived in wretched conditions and were all obviously badly undernourished.

After we arrived at the mental hospital, we soon were seated before the head psychiatrist, who came straight to the point. The hospital, he said, does not allow patients to come back once they have left the hospital.

I remember arguing that surely a man as ill as Gospel needed better protection. The psychiatrist fired back: “Padre, this is not a jail; patients are here voluntarily.”

The psychiatrist really lit into Julia, repeatedly accusing her of abandoning her son in the hospital. I listened to it all and became quite angry.

I explained the living conditions of this woman. I described her life of living in poverty within poverty, the needs her other children had and the fact she simply had no free time.

The psychiatrist backed off and said the hospital would readmit Gospel, but that there would be no repeat concession. With that, the nurses took Gospel to find him a bed, and we thanked everybody and left.

Once back in the car, it was obvious that Julia was at the end of her rope and exhausted from the interview. I dropped off Julia and the sergeant and went back to the parish center.

That night, Julia was back. She told me that Gospel had arrived back at her home just 90 minutes after we had returned home. That was some feat on his part.

We knew our hands were tied. There was nothing more either of us could do.

The sense of frustration took over as well as anger at the government’s indifference to such desperate situations so many people like Julia must endure. I was left with a feeling of uselessness and helplessness.

What the poor mother felt, God alone knows. Poverty is a dead-end street.