Letter from Guatemala City: Fifteen people have died in front of that door in the last three months, says Father Maquira Manolo. I make a note of the grim statistic. There are no flowers or crosses to mark the spot where the gang-related killings took place, writes Catherine Foley.
We are in one of the poorest areas of Guatemala City in Central America. Together we walk on through the shanty town where up to 36,000 people live. Corrugated iron stretches for miles. Father Manolo's parish is here. It is all around in a barrio that stretches under the Bridge of Incense - the Puente Belice, one of the city's main points of entry.
The people "have been here for years and years. They loose their identity," he says, looking out at the ramshackle dwellings which cover the steep sides of the river's ravine.
Father Manolo, a Jesuit priest who has worked and lived in this area for the past six years, unlocks his front door. Inside is his little kitchen, a concrete shed, where his washing-up is neatly stacked beside the sink. The ceiling seems in danger of collapsing from damp. He pulls out some plastic chairs where we can talk about his work.
"More than half the population is indigenous," he explains. "More than half the population of Guatemala city live in these conditions. There are almost no work sources here. Normally the men abandon their families. The young people grow up on the streets alone. They grow up in an atmosphere of violence.
"The first thing is people here classify themselves as being trash, rubbish; how do you start to give them self-esteem?
"They don't even know their father or have any notion of affection. They are so damaged that they can't believe that anyone would ever love them or feel affection for them.
"That's why it's easy for these young people to get into gangs. The group offers them some sort of identity, of belonging to something."
There are two gangs, he explains, with gang members ranging in age from 13 up to 30. "You never get out of it. When you are there two to three years, you die. 90 per cent of the gang die within two to three years."
Father Manolo now works closely with young women. "Their reality is worse than what men experience."
He estimates that between 60 and 70 per cent of girls under the age of 12 have been raped in the family. "For us it is very important that kids break out of the cycle and get into education."
What I am trying to do, he explains, "is to create a sense of belonging to something else, and the aim is that they can look to the future and see that there's some hope."
This year in his parish of 6,000, he has helped start a small project making jeans, exporting them to the US. The project now employs 43 young people - 27 women and 16 men. They work for six hours "and we oblige them to study in the afternoon".
Three people from this community are going to university for the first time this year. "You can see the change. , It's as if someone has inserted a chip in their brains.
"It's indescribable - the difference it makes to them, and there's a long list of people who want to get in."
We go to take a look at the little church where Father Manolo says Mass. In an instant a group of children have gathered around him. Some come over to hug him. Some women stand nearby shyly waiting to salute him.
These are the Mayan people of Guatemala, the indigenous people, who have come to the city to improve their lot.
These are some of the people the Irish agency Trócaire is hoping to help this year with money raised through its Lenten fund-raising campaign.
Another Jesuit priest, Father Peter Marchetti, who has spent years working with the Maya people during and after the country's 36-year civil war to help them combat ethnic exclusion and racial discrimination, stands nearby.
He speaks graphically about the brutality and the sadism of the war, which ended in 1996.
This is the reality of a divided country, he says looking around at the poverty.
"The apartheid here is just as pervasive as South Africa, but it's more inflexible here. With an entrepreneurial class that was in direct control of the government, obviously the indigenous people were excluded."