Priest evangelizing in the peripheries of Lima says he sees ‘miracles all the time’
Spanish missionary Father Julio Alonso Ampuero leads weekly retreats, confessions, and biblical formation for vulnerable people in South Lima's Diocese of Lurín. He reports frequent “miracles” in the form of conversions and renewed faith, noting the joy and lasting impact on participants who return for more retreats. The Holy Family Retreat House offers inner‑healing, couples, and silent retreats, with a policy of welcoming those with limited finances. Ampuero, a biblical scholar with 30 publications, arrived in Peru in 2011 after studies in Spain, Italy, Rome, and Jerusalem, and has focused his ministry on evangelization and spiritual formation.
4 months ago
Father Julio Alonso Ampuero, a Spanish missionary priest serving the Diocese of Lurín in South Lima, spends every weekend leading retreats, hearing confessions, and ministering to men at a shelter, where he says he witnesses “miracles” in the form of conversions and renewed faith 1.
Ampuero conducts weekend retreats at the Holy Family Retreat House, offering biblical formation and pastoral care to people from the poorest neighborhoods 1.
He also serves the Sowing Hope shelter, which houses 150 men—including the elderly, those with mental illness, and former addicts—providing them with spiritual guidance 1.
The most requested retreats focus on inner healing and couples, with silent retreats added to meet a growing desire for personal reflection 1.
Participants often return, describing profound joy and transformation, which Ampuero describes as “miracles constantly” 1.
Ampuero stresses that financial need never bars anyone from attending; the retreat house welcomes those who can pay only partially or not at all 1.
He highlights faith’s role in freeing addicts, asserting that an encounter with Christ can “heal all wounds” 1.
Arriving in Peru in 2011 after academic work in Spain and Italy, Ampuero holds a specialization in Sacred Scripture and has published nearly 30 works on biblical and spiritual formation 1.
His experience as a professor and seminary formator informs his current focus on evangelization and formation 1.
Ampuero attributes his stamina to daily prayer, calling it “oxygen” for his ministry 1.
He encourages young people feeling a call to religious life, reminding them that God will provide the means to follow that call, echoing a saying of Pope Benedict XVI 1.*
Examine how contemporary evangelization practices reflect Catholic doctrinal continuity
Contemporary evangelization often looks “new” in tone, tools, and pastoral strategy—but Catholic doctrine teaches that it must remain continuous in content, intention, and mission. The Church’s “new evangelization” is precisely meant to show that the Gospel does not change while the Church learns how to propose it more fittingly in each era.
Catholic continuity is grounded in the Church’s understanding of her own identity: she “perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes” (quoting Dei Verbum).
That principle becomes a criterion for evangelization. The Church insists that the essential content of the Gospel cannot be altered or ignored, even when pastoral methods are changed. Paul VI states this clearly: evangelization has secondary elements that vary with time and circumstance, but “there is the essential content, the living substance, which cannot be modified or ignored without seriously diluting the nature of evangelization itself.”
Likewise, John Paul II warns that evangelization must present the Christian message “in all its integrity,” avoiding “deviations” that threaten the “purezza della fede” (purity of the faith) or weaken the coherence and unity of the Gospel’s doctrine—especially through a systematic presentation of revealed doctrine, not merely “the lived personal experience” or reducing doctrine to its “consequences” in temporal life.
Doctrinal continuity, then, is not mainly a matter of keeping old expressions unchanged; it is a matter of ensuring that evangelization remains faithful to the same revealed truth continually taught and lived.
One of the most common misunderstandings about contemporary evangelization is to assume it signals doctrinal rupture. The Church explicitly rejects that framing.
Benedict XVI is presented (through a synthesis quoting his teaching) as defining what is “new” about the new evangelization: it is “new” not in content but in its “inner thrust,” open to the Holy Spirit; “new” in ways suited to the power of the Holy Spirit and “to the times and situations”; and “new” even where the faith has already been proclaimed, because secularization and the “eclipse of the sense of God” require the Gospel to be proposed anew.
This matches Paul VI’s core pastoral instruction about evangelization methods: the “obvious importance of the content” must not be overshadowed by “the importance of the ways and means,” because methods vary by “time, place and culture,” and pastors must reshape them with “boldness and wisdom” while maintaining “complete fidelity to the content.”
Contemporary practices—for example, shifting catechetical formats, updated preaching styles, renewed evangelistic outreach in secular contexts—can therefore reflect doctrinal continuity when they function as adaptations of presentation, not revisions of doctrine.
Catholic continuity is also practical: evangelization is not mainly a human technique. The Church teaches that evangelization’s principal engine is grace—especially the Holy Spirit.
A synthesis of Church teaching states that the new evangelization is “not possible without the action of the Holy Spirit,” who is the “principal agent of evangelization.”
This matters for interpreting contemporary evangelization. When modern initiatives emphasize prayer, conversion of heart, and reliance on grace (rather than presenting evangelization as mere marketing or social engineering), they align with Catholic doctrine about the agent behind evangelization and thus express continuity at the level of spirituality and purpose.
A major feature of contemporary evangelization is the use of social communications—digital media, audiovisual messaging, and culturally shaped communication strategies. The Church’s magisterial teaching here is nuanced: using media is not optional, but using media correctly requires careful integration of the Gospel into modern culture.
The Pontifical Council for Social Communications teaches that media “can and should be instruments” for re-evangelization and new evangelization, and that the Church would feel “guilty before the Lord” if she failed to utilize these powerful means.
But it also adds a crucial continuity safeguard: it is “not enough to use the media simply to spread the Christian message and the Church’s authentic teaching.” The Church must also “integrate that message into the ‘new culture’ created by modern communications,” using “new languages, new techniques and a new psychology.”
This is doctrinal continuity in practice: the message remains Christian and faithful, while the communicative incarnation adapts to the environment.
Similarly, the International Theological Commission (building on conciliar and synodal teaching) describes evangelization as including inculturation—the “intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through their integration in Christianity.” It also notes the need to evangelize cultures with “critical sympathy,” openness, and cultural analysis so that the Gospel can meet real human aspirations.
Therefore, contemporary evangelization practices that engage culture intelligently—rather than merely repeating slogans—can reflect doctrinal continuity when they preserve the “essential content” while reshaping methods and expressions to meet the people of the present age.
Another contemporary emphasis is the renewed value given to traditional forms of devotion and liturgical life—often integrated into evangelization rather than treated as secondary.
A Eucharistic Congress-related document emphasizes that the Church invites believers to be “imaginative” and to integrate “various forms of popular piety linked to the Eucharist” into the Church’s new evangelization.
This approach can be read as doctrinal continuity: popular piety is not necessarily “a modern invention”; it functions as a living mode of faith expression that points back to Eucharistic doctrine and catechesis, rather than substituting for it. When integrated properly, it supports evangelization by helping people encounter Christ within the Church’s worship and sacramental imagination.
Continuity is not only about “what” is taught, but also about “why” the Church evangelizes in every period.
A CDF doctrinal note frames evangelization as commanded by Christ to all peoples and guided through history by Christ’s continued presence with the Church, bearing fruit so that the evangelizing mission “numquam desistat per historiae decursum” (never ceases through the course of history).
This helps evaluate contemporary strategies: new initiatives should not function as if evangelization were a temporary cultural fad. Instead, even the newest methods remain instruments within a mission that is historically continuous because Christ’s mandate and the Church’s obligation endure.
To examine whether modern evangelization reflects doctrinal continuity, Catholic teaching provides at least three checkpoints:
When these conditions are met, contemporary evangelization can genuinely appear “new” in practice while remaining continuously Catholic in doctrine.
Contemporary evangelization reflects Catholic doctrinal continuity when it treats the Gospel as unchangeable “living substance,” adapts only the methods and expressions to new cultural circumstances, and relies on the Holy Spirit as evangelization’s principal agent—whether through media, inculturation, catechesis, or the integration of popular piety with Eucharistic life.