Marion M. Ganey

Fr. Marion M. Ganey, S.J., (1904–1984) was a Catholic priest, member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), and missionary to British Honduras, Central America, from 1937 to 1953, where he was instigator of the credit union and cooperatives movement. He became increasingly prominent in this movement, being invited to the Fiji Islands in 1953 and laboring to establish the movement there and throughout the South Pacific until his death in Fiji in 1984.

Marion M. Ganey was born July 21, 1904, and entered the Society of Jesus on August 7, 1922. He studied for the priesthood at St. Louis University divinity school in St. Marys, Kansas, and was ordained in 1935. After a year of spiritual studies he arrived in British Honduras (Belize) in 1937. As assistant pastor at Holy Redeemer Cathedral in Belize City, he organized youth clubs and Golden Gloves boxing tournaments. Direct contact with the poor, along with the social encyclicals of Popes Pius XI and Leo XIII, launched Ganey on his career of founding credit unions and cooperatives. In his time at Holy Redeemer Cathedral, Ganey would fill the hall with “a thousand young men.” To found the credit union at Holy Redeemer, Ganey relied on a fellow Jesuit Fr. Henry Sutti, who grew up at Fr. Flanagan’s Boys Town in Nebraska. Bishop Dorick M. Wright, in his preface to the history of the Catholic church in Belize, calls “the credit union and cooperative movements stalwart pillars in the country’s economic development.”

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