PHOENIX — The Rev. William B. Wasson, a Catholic priest originally from Phoenix who spent more than 50 years caring for orphaned children in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, is dead at 82.
Wasson died Wednesday in Cottonwood of complications from a hip injury he received while visiting a Mexican orphanage, according to James Hoyt, executive director of Friends of the Orphans, which supports the orphanages Wasson founded.
Wasson founded a series of homes for orphaned and abandoned children called Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, or Our Little Brothers and Sisters, in 1954. The homes have since raised and supported more than 15,000 children and currently care for 3,000 boys and girls in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
Wasson said in a 1997 interview with The Arizona Republic that there weren't too many children in the world, "just too many for the amount of people who are willing to care for them."
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"It was just part of who he was, to always open his heart and open the door to improve the life of others," Hoyt said. "That was his call very early on. He really believed that it was going to be through a quality education that would help his children break the cycle of poverty."
Wasson was born in Phoenix in 1923 and ordained a priest in 1953 in Mexico. He was assigned to the chapel in the Tepetates market district of Cuernavaca, 50 miles south of Mexico City. There he instituted a day-care center for poor children, and the next year rescued a boy from prison who had stolen from the church poor box "because he was hungry."
Wasson began Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos after he was awarded custody of the boy and eight others in his cell.
Among other honors, Wasson received the Mexican National Prize in 1977, the National Catholic Development Conference Good Samaritan Award in 1979, and the National Caring Award from The Caring Institute of Washington, D.C. in 1997.
A funeral Mass will be Thursday at St. Mary's Basilica in Phoenix.
