James Francis Carney (1924−1983) was an American missionary who ministered to peasants and left-wing insurgents in Honduras before being killed in that country's armed conflict in 1983. Life Carney was born in Chicago to parents of German and Irish ancestry. His father was a salesman for the Burroughs Adding Machine Corporation, and the family moved around frequently. They were also devoted listeners of the antisemitic Father Charles Coughlin's radio show. Carney graduated from St. Louis University High School in Missouri in 1942, and went on to Saint Louis University on a football scholarship. Despite poor vision and a football-related knee injury, he was drafted and saw service in the European Theatre of World War II as a combat engineer and military policeman. After the war, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to return to SLU to study theology, then transferred to the University of Detroit the following year before finally ending up at St. Stanislaus Seminary in Florissant, Missouri in 1948. He spent three years as a missionary in British Honduras (today Belize) beginning in 1955 before returning to the United States to study at St. Mary's College in Kansas. After being ordained into the Jesuit order in 1961, Carney was sent to work with impoverished Hondurans by the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus. He eventually naturalized as a Honduran citizen and reportedly renounced his U.S. citizenship. Nevertheless, he was expelled to Nicaragua by the Honduran government in 1979. In Nicaragua, he ministered to members of the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (PRTC). He eventually became chaplain to a group of PRTC fighters who had been trained by Cuba in the P-11 nd P-13 insurgency training camps in Pinar del Rio, Cuba—joining with the group in Nicaragua and returning with them to Honduras in 1983. Death According to PRTC deserters, morale in the group sagged as the insurgents traveled from Nicaragua, across the Río Coco to Honduras, and began a brutal four-day march to the top of the barren Olancho mountain range above the river. They ran low on supplies, and as described by the PRTC insurgent commander, Dr. José María Reyes Mata, in his diary..."to celebrate the victory of the march, we ate the last of our rations". Carney clashed with Mata, the group's commander, when he valiantly but vainly tried to defend the life of one of the young insurgents accused of attempted desertion.