Blackwell Reference Online

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James Francis Carney was born in Chicago, Illinois. After living in several cities in Ohio, his family settled in St. Louis, Missouri in 1941, where he was awarded a football scholarship to St. Louis University. When the US entered World War II, however, he left school to serve in the Army Corps of Engineers. Following the war, he entered the University of Detroit to study engineering. In August 1948 he decided to study for the Jesuit priesthood and therefore began matriculating at the order's seminary in Florissant, Missouri. After 13 years of study and pastoral training he was ordained in 1961. As part of his training, he taught English and elocution in British Honduras at St. John's College (a Jesuit high school) from 1955 through 1958, while also ministering to the region's poor blacks and Ketchi Indians. Perhaps because of this experience he was immediately assigned after ordination to mission work in Honduras, where he served mostly in the department of Yoro. There he trained village catechists to lead Bible services and helped them form peasants into Christian base communities ( comunidades de base ), where scripture study was employed to raise awareness among the rural poor of structural socioeconomic injustice. In 1963 he became chaplain for the newly formed National Association of Honduran Peasants (ANACH) and quickly developed a national reputation for his support of ... log in or subscribe to read full text