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| Sales from the proceeds of Father Ted Pfeifer’s memoirs will be used to produce a documentary about the retired Oblate priest’s ministry in Mexico.
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By J. Michael Parker
For Today’s Catholic
When 14-year-old Francis Theodore “Ted” Pfeifer first arrived in San Antonio in 1946 to follow his vocation with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, he couldn’t have known what awaited him in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico more than 30 years later.
But his years of preparation at St. Anthony’s Apostolic School (now St. Anthony’s High School) and the De Mazenod Scholasticate (now Oblate School of Theology) told him that the Oblates were “Specialists in Difficult Missions” – a title an admiring Pope Pius XI gave to them in 1938.
At his priestly ordination in 1959, the 26-year-old Father Pfeifer took the customary religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, adding the Oblates’ fourth vow: perseverance even unto death.
Now 76, Father Pfeifer brought a wealth of personal experiences confirming both the title and the gravity of the fourth vow to his 50th anniversary as an Oblate priest May 30.
Many of those experiences are detailed in a 72-page memoir, When the Wolves Came, privately published by his family just after the anniversary festivities.
For all the violence generated by the growing drug activities in the Mexican state of Oaxaca beginning in the early 1980s – including an ambush of Father Pfeifer with an automatic weapon as he drove on the Pan-American Highway in March 1987 – the humble but gritty priest survived in Oaxaca until his 1994 transfer to Mexico City, where he ministered for 13 more years.
Only a stroke in October 2007 finally ended his active priestly ministry and forced his return to San Antonio. Surprisingly, by May 2008, he had recovered so completely that he could begin the laborious task of writing down many of his memories with pen and ink in a set of spiral notebooks. A friend offered to type and edit the writings, to which Father Pfeifer continued to add in the ensuing months.
In one chapter, the book tells of driving a Jeep pickup truck up the mountains in early 1982 with a group of the Oblates’ high school seminarians visiting from San Antonio and learning that drug traffickers were shooting at a family inside their home in Santo Tomas Yautepec, a villages in his parish.
Father Pfeifer said his first instinct was not to get involved, but he could not let the family face this terror alone. He made his confession to a priest who had come with the seminarians, then both priests drove to the village, leaving the seminarians by the road to keep them out of danger. The priests found the home and kept the attackers at bay long enough to evacuate the bleeding victims, along with a screaming mother and children.
After the 1987 ambush– which the priest characterized as a warning rather than an attempted assassination – he said he heard the church bells ringing one day at an odd time – 3 p.m. A group of village women came and warned him to stay in his house. A murderer was angry at the priest’s opposition to drug activities and wanted to kill him. The women themselves went and faced down the angry man and drove him away.
Around the same time, the priest invited everyone who had firearms used for murder to bring the weapons to the church so they could be destroyed. He built a fire in the plaza in front of the church, where people took turns smashing the firearms with a sledge hammer and throwing the pieces into the fire.
Father Pfeifer said that many people, including officials at the U.S. State Department, have never understood why he didn’t leave Oaxaca much earlier for a safer assignment.
His answer drew from Jesus’ parable of the Good Shepherd, which also suggested the title for his memoir.
Concelebrating the anniversary Mass with Father Pfeifer were his younger brother, San Angelo Bishop Michael D. Pfeifer, and their cousin, Father James Pfeifer of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Mission, both of whom also are Oblates.
Members of one of Father Pfeifer’s former parishes, San Pedro Martir in Quiechapa, Oaxaca, Mexico, were among the several hundred people who attended Father Pfeifer’s anniversary festivities.
Dancers from the parish performed at the reception, and one of them read a letter expressing the parish community’s thanks for “making the decision to give your life to serve others like an older brother, guiding us on the right path.”
Xodus Productions Inc., of San Antonio, is about to begin work on an hour-long documentary film based on the memoir and including interviews with Father Pfeifer and many of his former parishioners. The film is to be financed by private donations and sales of the book.