Bones in Honduras not those of disappeared U.S. priest By Paul Jeffrey Tegucigalpa, Honduras (CNS) - The family and friends of Fr. James Carney will have to go on looking for the remains of the disappeared priest from the United States. A set of human bones discovered in January in a remote section of Honduras does not belong to Carney, according to a fellow Jesuit who studied the remains. “After examining the skeleton and talking with forensic experts here, I am satisfied that the remains are not those of Jim Carney,” Fr. Joseph Mulligan, SJ, told Catholic News Service. Known widely in Honduras as “Padre Guadalupe,” Carney was expelled by Honduras’ military government in 1979. After serving as a parish priest in Nicaragua, Carney reentered Honduras in 1983 as chaplain of a small guerrilla band attempting to overthrow the military government. Several versions of what happened to Carney and other members of the guerrilla group have surfaced over the years, yet all point to his death at the hands of U.S.-backed soldiers carrying out counterinsurgency operations in the rugged Patuca River area of eastern Honduras. When the skeletal remains of a male over six feet tall were uncovered in a common grave in the Honduran jungle in January, many here hoped that Carney’s remains had finally been found. The skeleton was brought to Tegucigalpa where it was examined in the forensic laboratory of the Honduran Public Ministry. At least three other skeletons remained untouched in the grave, the exact location of which has not been revealed. Although the results of an official examination have yet to be released, Dr. Amilcar Rodas, the lab’s director, told CNS that he concurred with Mulligan’s findings. According to Aida Romero, the government’s special prosecutor for human rights, the search will go on. She told CNS on March 24 that she hoped to fly to eastern Honduras within the next week in order to retrieve the additional sets of remains from the grave site. Because of its remote location, Romero said her team would use helicopters to reach the zone, which otherwise takes more than a day of traveling by dugout canoe and hiking from the nearest road. “Solving the case of Fr. Carney is very important,” Romero said. She said the remains discovered in eastern Honduras are probably those of the defeated guerrilla column, or else could be those of former Nicaraguan contras who used Honduras as a base in the 1980s. She said only by comparing the skeletons with medical records provided by family members of the guerrilla combatants could forensic experts make positive identifications. In Carney’s case, Mulligan said he compared dental records provided by Carney’s family with the teeth of the suspect skeleton. According to the dental records, Carney was missing teeth number 2, 15, 18, 30 and 31. Mulligan said all those teeth are present in the suspect skeleton. Mulligan said there were other physical indications that the skeleton was that of a person around 25 years old. Carney was 58 when he disappeared. The Honduran military destroyed records from the era and has refused to reveal what it knows about Carney’s fate. Romero said the search for what happened to Carney would be easier if the U.S. would cooperate. “We don’t have all the information we need. We sent the U.S. government a request for files about the case, but it hasn’t responded. We’re about to go to court to ask the foreign ministry to intervene on our behalf with the U.S. government, but we’ve been told not to get our hopes up that this course of action would produce results,” Romero said.