Necrologium
When a missionary dies, we should celebrate the last rites with devotion, fraternal love, and simplicity. We should remember all our brothers who have gone before us in the service of the Gospel, commending them to the Lord with the prescribed prayers, especially in the celebration of the Eucharist.
We should show the same reverence and respect for our departed parents and for deceased collaborators of the Congregation.
(Constitution 19)
IN MEMORY OF OUR DEARLY DEPARTED BROTHERS:
P. Joan Sidera i Plana
DATE OF DEATH: February 4, 2018
AGE: Age: 99
PLACE OF DEATH: Barcelona, Spain
ORGANISM: Catalunya
EULOGY:
P. Joan Sidera i Plana, CMF, descansa en la Paz del Señor!
Hoy, domingo 4 de febrero, ha partido a la Casa del Padre el misionero claretiano más veterano de la Congregación; estaba a punto de cumplir los 100 años, solo faltaba un mes y pocos días. Fue compañero de muchos de nuestros mártires beatificados, tanto de los de Barbastro como de los de Cervera. Durante muchos años se dedicó al anuncio del Evangelio a través de la docencia. Las últimas cuatro décadas de su vida fueron especialmente fecundas ya que se dedicó a investigar en las fuentes de nuestra historia congregacional. Gracias a su trabajo arduo y constante conocemos mejor al P. Claret y nuestra identidad misionera. ¡Le debemos tanto!
Muchas gracias, P. Joan, por todo tu legado. Que el Corazón de María y el P. Claret te acojan y te introduzcan en la Paz eterna y gozosa del amor del Padre. ¡Descansa en Paz!
Fr. Jesús Bermejo, CMF Dies in Vic
Vic, Spain. Fr. Jesús Bermejo has died in Vic at the age of 72 years. He was one of the greatest scholars of the life and works of St. Anthony Mary Claret that the Congregation has ever had.
He was born in Tornavacas (Cáceres, Spain), and made his first profession in 1960. After his Ordination in 1968 he exercised various ministries in formation (Prefect of seminarians, professed students, and Master of novices) until he was sent to Rome in charge of the Claretian Secretariat in 1976.
He carried out an important work of research and prepared, in collaboration with Fr. José María Viñas, CMF the publication of the Autobiography and Pastoral Works of St. Anthony Mary Claret. He published the whole collection of the Passive Letters, a Selection of Letters of the Saint, the Spiritual Writings, and the Marian Writings of the Saint.
In 2010 he was assigned to the Center of Claretian Spirituality in Vic (CESC) where he was organizing and preparing the publication of all the material he gathered in Cuba over three years on the life and ministry of Archbishop Claret in the Archdiocese of Santiago, Cuba.
The Death of Claretian Sister Encarnación Velasco
Madrid, Spain. On Saturday, January 7th around 5:00 p.m., after a long illness, Sister Encarnación Velasco Fernández, RMI died. She was Superior General of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mary Immaculate, Claretian Missionary Sisters. At the time of her death she was 71 years of age and lived 46 years in religious life. May she rest in peace!
The Claretian founder of Amnesty International in Spain dies
Barcelona. On April 15 Fr. Manuel Casanoves, cmf died in this city. The news of his death was picked up by several media since he is considered as the founder of the “Amnesty International” movement in Spain. He had known this institution when he was assigned in England.
The page http://www.es.amnesty.org noticias says about him:
“…he read the foundation article of AI “The forgotten prisoners,” published in the newspaper The Observer in 1961 by the British lawyer Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International and promptly joined the organization (…)”
Manuel Casanoves remembered, with these words, the origins of the organization, in one of his last interviews recorded in 2008 on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the organization in Spain: A few young persons gathered for the first time in Barcelona…, there were some journalists… after that, we gathered from time to time. We began to participate jointly in campaigns against torture in Paraguay, in Uruguay, in China… Little by little we acquired some voice, but we were not yet legalized in Spain.
On July 15, 1978 the first Constituent Assembly of Amnesty International took place in Barcelona, in which Manuel Casanoves became the first president of the organization in Spain.
That small group of activists impelled by Casanoves became in a little more than thirty years an organization with over 58,000 male and female members, more than 1,800 activists who participate in more than 100 groups of volunteers scattered throughout the entire Spanish geography, which mobilize millions of people to defend human rights all over the world. Casanoves defined the organization that he helped organize with these words: “I believe that Amnesty is the voice of conscience.” (photo)
The note that appeared in http://www.catalunyareligio.cat is also worth reading.
The Lord calls Fr. Yvon Lafontaine to his glory
Canada. . Fr. Yvon Lafontaine, Major Superior of the Claretians of Canada, died in the morning of December 23, after a long sickness carried with admirable serenity and conformity from the first moment when he received the news that his malady was incurable and he had a very limited time of life.
During this time he followed his life with absolute normality, without renouncing any of his commitments as Major Superior, including his participation in the General Chapter celebrated in Rome in August – September. He participated in encounters in and out of his Province and has made evident his integrity, joy and good humor. Conscious that the end of his days was approaching he has given an admirable example of his acceptance of death.
He has already met the Lord Jesus, for whom he always lived, who permitted him to have this long and painful personal advent. The Lord has come to him in this advanced and happy Christmas.
The people manifest their love 50 years after his death
Peru. The people of Huacho, with their Bishop leading them, renders a heartfelt homage to Fr. Eusebio Arróniz Gómez, a simple Claretian missionary, to remember him 50 years after his death. What is it that remains in the heart and in the memory of the people to keep such a deep affection toward him?
This saintly missionary (this is how they know him) stood out for his missionary passion, his cordial dealing with the people, his untiring dedication to the pastoral work, his joy, his creativity, his simplicity and his dedication to the poorest, the prisoners, the children and the eldest. He was a veritable popular missionary.
He was born in Zúñiga – Navarra (Spain) in 1885 and was sent to Peru in a very early age. He worked in a first stage in the diocesan seminaries of Lima and Trujillo as a professor of different disciplines, where he stood out for his closeness with the youth and his great capacity to form them in values. In a second moment he worked in the rural parishes of Cajabamba and Huacho. He stayed in this last city from 1945 to 1958, the year when the Claretians left that city. He was assigned to Arequipa, where he died the following year, on November 1st, 1958, Solemnity of All Saints.
At the insistence of the people, his remains were transferred to Huacho where they rest at the entrance of the cemetery and receive a strong popular veneration.
On November 1st the Bishop of the Diocese of Huacho, Mons. Antonio Santarsiero, presided over the Eucharist, in which the Claretian Frs. Carlos Sánchez and Ronel Chipana, representing the Congregation, participated with two diocesan priests. Then a Pilgrimage took place to the cemetery, where the people dedicated to him prayers, poems and different signs of affection and popular devotion. During the previous week there was an exposition of remembrances of his missionary work: photos, letters and different objects. It was inspiring to observe the strong love that the people has for Fr. Eusebio, in spite of the 50 years that have already passed.
Fr. Severino María Alonso dies in Logroño
Spain. This morning, in the midst of the Priestly Year, and 50 years after receiving the grace of the priesthood, after five days of hospitalization, Fr. Severino-María Alonso Rodríguez died in Logroño, at the age of 76, and 57 of religious life. He studied Theology in Santo Domingo de la Calzada and in Rome, where he received his doctorate in the Angelicum in 1961 and obtained other university degrees in Spiritual Theology and Mariology. He was also ordained priest there, in the city of Peter and Paul.
His ministerial service begins in Sto. Domingo de la Calzada as Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the school year 1961-62, and then he goes through Oviedo (62-64; 68-69), where he is the director of a university residence; the Lebanon (64-66), where he renders service as Spiritual Director of the Maronites; Rome (66-68), as professor and formator of Claretian students of several nationalities; in the Claretian Province of León (69-80), first as Vicar and then Major Superior of the Claretian Province of León, until he came to Madrid, where -more than residing- he had his centre of ministerial and missionary activities since 1980 until now. In the Claretian centenary community of Buen Suceso, in Madrid, he was been local Superior for more than twelve years; Director (1980-1985), Subdirector and unceasing collaborator of the Vida Religiosa magazine; Professor of the Regina Apostolorum School and of the Theological Institute of Religious Life, in which he has been Professor (since 1991) and Director (1982-88); member of the Theological Commission of the Spanish Conference of Religious (CONFER), writer, lecturer, assessor and untiring spiritual companion… Few airports, train stations and roads of Spain and America will not know his figure.
He is the author of more than fifteen books, some with about fifteen editions, and of many collaborations and articles, both long and short. Thousands of religious men and women have benefited from his reflection, good criterion and hope-full word, transmitted in a missionary service that was manifested in very different forms: conduction of retreats and recollections; conferences, short courses, classes, letters… in a style that reminds us of that of St. Anthony Mary Claret, for its depth and fruitful diversity. His brothers of Congregation have counted on him to participate in various General Chapters, an expert very much involved in the post-Council renewal of the Constitutions of the Congregation. Especially sensitive to the gift of the Cordimarian Filiation, which he lived with a remarkable depth, lover of life, of a life understood as inseparable from Grace, we commend him to God, full of gratitude, remembering his blood brothers who survive him, his other relatives and the entire Claretian Family, who together with other consecrated families, who also considered him as theirs, lament today -in faith and hope- his absence.
(For more details on his spirit, see www.masdecerca.com)
Paola Majocchi, the co-foundress of Seguimi dies
Rome. Paola Majocchi, together with the Claretian Missionary Fr. Anastasio Gutiérrez, started the Seguimi (Follow me) Movement, which maintains close relationships with the Claretian Family.
Paola is born in Reggio Emilia (Italy) in 1931. She has a great desire to live as consecrated to the Lord. She gets in contact with jurist Fr. Anastasio Gutiérrez and with him founds in 1965 the Lay Group Seguimi (Follow me).
Paola “has an intuition” and Fr. Gutiérrez “has the juridical means” – the minimum structure that gives life to the Movement: a symbiosis and a strongly fruitful complementarity in the pre and post-council Church. What united them? The desire that “Christ were all in everyone,” the longing for renewal and simplification of life in the Church, to obtain that every person could express itself with its potentialities, with the freedom of the “children of God,” to tend to communion and to family life as a place to be oneself and to grow in evangelical witnessing. In addition, they had in common, beyond aspects of character: that they knew how to work intensively, without timetable.
In 1984 the Group, mainly thanks to Fr. Gutiérrez’ competency and tenacity, obtained the Pontifical approval of the Pontifical Council for the laity; and since 1990 Seguimi began its expansion abroad: Spain, Africa and the first steps in Latin America. On September 26, 2009, with the death of Paola, preceded by that of the “Padrino” (as Fr. Gutiérrez was familiarly known) on January 6, 1998, they come to a fullness of communion.
In 2005 his book “In cordata” appeared, in which he reflects the spirit of the Movement.