Father Joseph Fahy, who served Hispanic Catholics in the archdiocese for three years, is one of five Passionist priests recently arrived in Honduras to serve the needs of the Church there.

They were formally missioned in a ceremony Oct. 19 at the Immaculate Conception Monastery Church in Jamaica, NY. Father Columkille Regan, CP, provincial of the eastern province, officiated.

Archbishop Hector Ramos of Tegucigalpa invited the Passionists to come and work in his archdiocese more than a year ago. The five priests joined another member of their order who is already working in an orphanage there.

They are spending their first weeks in Honduras trying to discern what their ministry should be in view of the pressing needs outlined by the archbishop.

In the spring of 1986, Father Fahy was a member of a Witness for Peace delegation from Atlanta to Nicaragua.

In his ministry to Hispanics in the Atlanta archdiocese, Father Fahy worked tirelessly for the Cubans detained in the federal prison in Atlanta. For some time he visited them weekly, celebrating Mass and conducting prayer groups in Spanish. His visitation rights were cancelled by prison officials after he began writing letters to the editor of the Atlanta daily papers on their plight.

He led a prayer vigil one Sunday afternoon each month outside the prison, sometimes joined by wives and children of the detainees. Last June when the Hispanic bishops of the United States met at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, he arranged for two of the wives to speak to them about the situation.

Father Fahy went to the Hispanics where they live and work. Several times weekly, he traveled to North Georgia mountain areas where Mexicans and Central Americans are employed in the poultry plants and carpet mills to counsel and celebrate Mass. He lived at St. Paul of the Cross rectory in southwest Atlanta.

The Hispanic leaders of the archdiocese, priests, sisters and laity, honored Father Fahy at a reception in late September at the Cathedral of Christ the King.

Although born in Washington, DC, he is a member of a Catholic family who lived in Rome, GA, since before the Civil War.