Missionary's fight against Mexican drug dealers made into film

Published: 2004-08-23

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (CNS) -- Prayer was often all Oblate Father Ted Pfeifer could fall back on while working as a missionary among poor communities in the mountainous state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. When he arrived in 1963, he never imagined the area would be taken over by gun-toting drug traffickers, who forced his dirt-poor parishioners to grow heroin poppy and marijuana. His defiance of their violence and manipulation eventually led to the drug traffickers, known as "narcos," turning their AK-47s on him. He survived the attack. "Only the Eucharist and prayer are what kept me going. I had nothing else," Father Pfeifer, now 71, told the Southern Texas Catholic, newspaper of the Corpus Christi Diocese. Father Pfeifer's story has been made into an independent film, "The Oath," which was shown in a private screening Aug. 6 at the Texas Independent Filmmakers Festival in San Antonio.

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