Rev. George Wichland
The Guild News, April 25, 1941
[This article represents the racial attitude of the times, but its language is offensive, so it is excerpted to include just the facts about the patient.]
The Rev. George Wichland, of the Redemptorist Order, [is] a missionary priest, now curing at Gabriels Sanatorium. . . .
Father Wichland was with a mission station in the wild Matto section of Peru for six years. His parish was something with which to reckon: a mere 375 miles long and 75 miles wide.
Ten thousand whites lived there, and Father Wichland says the number of Indians has never been counted.
The section is wild and there is no means of travel but by horseback. The food, largely dried beef, corn, and a root which tastes like a stringy turnip, is so bad that most American priests can stand it for only a month or so. It takes him two months of rest and reasonable diet to recuperate before he hits the trail again. . . .
Father Wichland is young and blond and rosy-cheeked. He thinks his 16 months at Gabriels have done him a lot of good, though he knows he'll never be able to stand the heat and disease in the Matto section again.
His pioneering work is bearing fruits and he says he is just one of many Catholic priests who have labored to bring the Christian faith and rules of decent living to a barbaric and benighted people.
