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Today is the Feast of St. Sebastian, patron saint of Reitoca, F.M., Honduras.
Very little is known about Sebastian except that he was a Roman martyr in the 200s. In art, he is often portrayed as a handsome young man tied to a post shot with arrows.
The name of our parish is San Francisco de Asís and headquartered in Reitoca. So, you might ask, why is St. Sebastian the patron saint of Reitoca if the church is dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi. Nobody seems to know.
Unlike American parishes that usually have just one church where everyone comes to Masses at different times, here in Honduras, parishes can be huge and have many churches. Our parish covers 125 square miles and has 4 municipios, and each municipio has different villages. Most of the villages have churches of our parish. As of January 2023, we have 89 churches with 2 priests to cover them. The pastor is an Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa priest, and I’m a missionary priest of the Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina. Some of the Reitoca churches take a 2-3-hour drive (one-way) to get there.
Two weeks before the feast of St. Sebastian, priests take a statue of St. Sebastian to the various churches of our parish that are part of the municipio of Reitoca; of the 40 churches of our parish, about 24 are part of the municipio of Reitoca.
In the photo above, we see some women of the church in Samalares Abajo visiting St. Sebastian. The church in Samalares Abajo is dedicated to the Holy Spirit.
