Victoria

Victoria García, 57, is from Los Planes del Horno, a remote satellite village of Comayagua that has neither electricity nor running water. She is a wife, a mother of nine and a grandmother.

She and her husband, Gregorio, are Catholic lay leaders in the village. Her family - part of the indigenous population of Honduras - engages in subsistence farming, usually raising just enough corn and beans to survive; they rarely have money. They live in one of 64 homes built in the village a few years ago by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

Victoria had walked for two days before arriving at the St. Benedict Joseph Medical Center on September 4 to be treated for gastritis and conjunctivitis. Because she is from a distant mountain village, Victoria was placed at the beginning of the line of waiting patients at the Center to be treated first and so to be able to begin the long trek back home as soon as possible.

The St. Benedict Joseph Medical Center exists for Victoria and for the hundreds of thousands of Hondurans in similar situations whom she represents.