Father Dan the Money Man

In a plush, carpeted office in down town Lima, one of Peru's top money men sits surrounded by symbols. Piled high on his desk are flocks of loan requests and the latest figures on competing banks. On one side of the office are shelves crammed with books on banking and credit. On the other side, a hatstand holds a clerical collar. Working comfortably in an open-necked white shirt, Lender-Missionary Father Daniel McClellan, 50, explains to visitors: "The French have their worker priests. Well, I am a capitalist priest."

Priest's Duty. Indeed he is. A Maryknoll missionary sent to Peru in 1950, Denver-born Father Dan is the founder and treasurer (he turned the presidency over to a Peruvian last year) of the 535-branch Credit Union League, which, with assets of $23 million, is the largest such organization in Latin America. He is president of El Pueblo (assets $8,650,000), Peru's second biggest savings and loan association, and executive vice president of the International Union of Building Societies and Savings and Loan Associations. To thousands of Peruvian peasants, he is simply "Father Dan the Money Man."

Father Dan came by his fiscal acumen purely through "priestly duty." On his first assignment in Peru in 1950, in the poor (per-capita income: $65) Andean town of Puno, he decided that what his peasant charges needed was financing as well as faith. In 1955, he organized the Puno Credit Union--Peru's first--with 23 members and $25 capital. While private banks were paying 4% interest on savings and lending at 20%, Father Dan's union paid 6%, loaned at 12%. Before long, the villagers were depositing what cash they had in the union. In its first two years it loaned $150,000, which brought the town, among other items, its first X-ray machine and modern dental equipment. Convinced that there was no "better way for the people to help themselves," Father Dan criss-crossed Peru by Jeep, plane and riverboat, set up more nonprofit unions. To date, his unions have loaned a total of $59 million for purchases of everything from outboard motors to fertilizer.

Worldly Concerns. Having scotched the Peruvian bankers' old complaint that the peasant could not be induced to save, Father Dan in 1961 set up a nonprofit savings and loan association to finance desperately needed low-cost housing. U.S. savings and loan men provided technical assistance. So far, Father Dan's El Pueblo association has loaned $11.9 million to build 3,613 houses in the Lima area.

Among Father Dan's other current concerns are construction of a 20-story skyscraper in Lima, a plan to secure $9,430,000 in new capital with two other savings and loan operators to set up a new housing-construction bank, and a $1,000,000 loan request to the Inter-American Development Bank to set up a cooperative bank among his credit unions. Such cares tend to affect a man's point of view. To a friend who recently saw him checking into Lima's Gran Hotel Bolivar, the capitalist priest explained that he "had to get away from the brothers. Those guys were keeping me awake all night arguing theology."

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