Catholic faithful from the capital, Georgetown, travelled in specially-chartered buses or in their own vehicles to Lethem, where they were joined by others from across the diocese for the celebrations.

The head of the British Province of Jesuits, Fr Michael Holman, was expected to be among the special guests.

The centenary programme began Friday, November 6 with a procession from St Ignatius Church to Beneb. A formal welcoming ceremony was followed by a number of cultural items before a grand dinner.

Games, an exhibition, a meeting/reflection of church leaders with Bishop Francis Alleyne and Jesuit Superior for Guyana, Fr Dermot Preston, were the highlights of the second day.

Bishop Alleyne was the main celebrant at a November 8 centenary Mass, which was followed by a presentation of gifts of appreciation to specially invited guests and others associated with the church.

Jesuit priests from the British Province began working in what was then British Guiana since 1857. In 1909 Bishop Galton and Jesuit priest Fr Cuthbert Carey Elwes founded the Rupununi mission.

To get there they had to endure a three-week journey from Georgetown via land and river, over dangerous rapids and through uninhabited forests before they selected a site in the Takutu River which separates Guyana from Brazil. Here they established the Church of St Ignatius which gives its name to the area today.

It was from St Ignatius that this missionary work of the Jesuits spread over the entire Rupununi and into the Pakaraima Mountains. By 1970 the Jesuits had built over 20 churches and schools in the Rupununi savannas and Pakaraima mountains - a testimony to the monumental endeavour of the missionaries in the face of the language barrier, loneliness, lack of communication, and travel on foot, horseback, boat and later by jeep. St Ignatius slowly grew into the modern day township of Lethem.

All was not easy going though, as from time to time the Jesuits incurred the wrath of the political directorate of the day, and Frs Patrick Connors, John Bridges and Manus Kene were among some who were expelled from the Rupununi. – edited from Catholic Standard