When the Missionaries of the Precious Blood first came to Chile, in the 1940s, the cardinal in Santiago offered them “an infinite number of possibilities,” according to Fr. Paul Buehler, C.PP.S., who was one of the first C.PP.S. missionaries to serve there. He told them, “Put a map on the wall, throw a dart on it, and wherever it lands, we need priests.”

The Missionaries went to work in Chile, rolling up their sleeves and joining the people in all their struggles. Indeed, they found that they were needed wherever they went, and they soon developed a reputation as down-to-earth workers in God’s vineyard, men of the people.

Today the Missionaries of the Precious Blood
still minister in Chile, the first overseas
missions of the Cincinnati Province. In
Santiago, they administer a school and
pastor the urban parish of Our Lady of the
Precious Blood. In Purranque, in southern
Chile, missionaries are pastors of the parish
of San Sebastian, and its 20 mission in the
surrounding countryside. In Valdivia, they
serve at two parishes, Christ the King and
Precious Blood.

Chile is a country of great sophistication in
its urban centers and great poverty
elsewhere. The Missionaries hope to show
God’s redeeming love to people who are struggling. “Our hope and prayer is to alleviate in a small way the injustice of the unfair distribution of goods in this world,” said Fr. Richard Beischel, C.PP.S., who has ministered in Chile for more than 40 years. “We don’t know the solution but we want to help. And we know that the answer is not technology but love.”