At Monteagudo in Navarre, Spain, the heavenly birthday of Saint Ezekiel Moreno Díaz, bishop of Pasto in Colombia, of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, who gave his labor and his life to proclaiming the Gospel both in the Philippine Islands and in South America.
Lifespan: 1848–1906
Beatified: 1 November 1975 by Pope Paul VI
Canonized: 11 October 1992 by Pope John Paul II, Santo Domingo
Memoria liturgica: 19 August
“Have I made myself unworthy to suffer for God, my Lord?”
The third child of a couple poor in material goods but rich in virtue, Ezekiel Moreno Díaz was born on 9 April 1848 in Alfaro, in the province of La Rioja, Spain. His father, Félix, a tailor by trade, and his mother, Josefa Díaz, exemplars of honesty and religious devotion, gave their children a deep Christian upbringing. From childhood, Ezekiel felt God’s call to the religious and missionary life. He longed to preach the Gospel in the Philippine Islands, having heard accounts of the marvellous works of the Augustinian Recollect missionaries labouring in those distant lands.
Following the example of his eldest brother Eustaquio, on 21 September 1864 he received the religious habit at the Augustinian Recollect convent of Monteagudo, Navarre, Spain, and took the name Friar Ezekiel of the Virgin of the Rosary — the name by which he loved to be called. A year later, on 22 September, he made his religious profession at the feet of Our Lady of the Way, whom he loved with singular tenderness. In 1866 he moved to the convent of Marcilla, where he pursued his theological studies.
In 1869 he was sent, together with seventeen fellow religious, to the Philippine Islands — the land of his dreams. On 10 February 1870 he arrived in Manila, where on 3 June 1871 he was ordained a priest and immediately assigned to the island of Mindoro, alongside his brother Eustaquio.
The integrity of his conduct, his love for the sick, and his zeal for the spread of the Gospel quickly won him the esteem of his superiors, who in 1872 — he was barely twenty-four years old — entrusted him with the delicate office of missionary and military chaplain to a Spanish government expedition to the islands of Palawan. There he immediately put his apostolic zeal to work among the military colony, and gave expression to his missionary ardour in forays through the territory in search of peoples who did not yet know God.
Stricken by severe fevers, he was compelled to return to Manila. Scarcely recovered, he was appointed parish priest of Calapan and provincial vicar of the Augustinian Recollects on the island of Mindoro — a wide-open field for his missionary endeavours. From 1876 to 1880 he served as parish priest of Las Piñas and of Santo Tomás in Batangas; from 1880 to 1885 he held the offices of conventual preacher in Manila, parish priest of Santa Cruz, and administrator of the estate of Imus.
The provincial chapter of 1885 appointed Friar Ezekiel prior of the convent of Monteagudo, where the consciences of future missionaries are formed. No one better than he — a missionary of great experience already renowned for holiness — could kindle in the hearts of young men a love for the missions. During his fifteen years in the Philippines he had left behind him a reputation for holiness and a vivid memory of his piety and apostolic zeal. This reputation would grow still further during the three years of his term at the convent of Monteagudo.
When his term as superior of the convent of Monteagudo ended, he volunteered to restore the Order in Colombia. Appointed head of an expedition, he left Spain at the end of 1888 with six other volunteer religious and arrived in Bogotá on 2 January 1889. His first aim was to restore religious observance within the communities. He was convinced that only good religious can be authentic apostles and missionaries, and he burned with the desire to revive the missions of Casanare, where the Augustinian Recollects of Colombia had proclaimed the Gospel for many years.
He was the first to plunge into that vast territory, visiting on muleback the small villages scattered across the wide plain and the steep mountains. His letters from the missions stirred the enthusiasm of the government and the ecclesiastical authorities, and fired the hearts of his fellow religious.
In 1893 Friar Ezekiel, by now renowned for his missionary zeal and his virtues, was appointed titular bishop of Pinara and apostolic vicar of Casanare, and was ordained to the episcopate in May 1894. He would have preferred to end his days there amid sufferings and privations — as he confided in one of his letters — but God had destined him for a far more arduous and demanding mission. In 1895 he was appointed Bishop of Pasto. When the news was communicated to him, an anguished question arose in his mind: “Have I made myself unworthy to suffer for God, my Lord?”
Yet in his new mission far harder and more bitter trials awaited him: humiliations, mockery, calumnies, persecutions, and even abandonment by his immediate superiors. It was a true dark night of the spirit, by which God purifies those souls called to the heights of perfection.
His deep spiritual life, ever straining towards God, and his love of contemplation drew around him a circle of chosen souls whom he guided with enlightened wisdom along the paths of holiness. A friend of truth and of the souls entrusted to him, he did not hesitate to place his own life at risk for his flock, after the manner of the good shepherd. He became the target of the insults and persecutions of those who sought to strike at the Church.
When a controversy arose around him on account of the firmness with which he defended the faith, he used his ad limina visit in 1898 to present his resignation to Pope Leo XIII. He did so not from any lack of strength of soul, but to spare the Holy See “conflicts” and “displeasure,” and to safeguard the reputation “of a brother in the episcopate.” The Pope did not accept his resignation. He returned to his diocese, where fresh persecutions and the horrors of a merciless civil war awaited him.
In 1905 he was afflicted with a cruel illness — a malignant tumour of the nose — which would cause him to drink the chalice of suffering to the last drop. His physicians urged him to go to Europe for surgery, but he refused, unwilling to abandon his flock. At the urging of his faithful and his priests, in December of that year he returned to Spain to undergo several surgical operations in Madrid. To conform himself more fully to Christ, he refused anaesthesia during these extremely painful operations, enduring them without a murmur and with a heroic fortitude that moved both the surgeon and his assistants to tears.
Knowing that his illness was mortal, he wished to spend the last days of his life in his beloved convent of Monteagudo, close to Our Lady. On 19 August 1906, after most acute sufferings, with his eyes fixed on the crucifix, he gave his soul to the Lord. Buried at the foot of the altar of the church of Our Lady of the Way, his mortal remains now rest in a beautiful chapel built expressly within the church precinct following his beatification.
His reputation for holiness spread not only within the Augustinian Recollect Order but also to many parts of the world, especially in Colombia. Numerous cures have been attributed to his intercession, especially from malignant tumours. The cures of two cancer patients served as the miracles required, first for his beatification and then for his canonization. It might be said that, having himself experienced the terrible suffering of this disease, he has a special compassion for those who fall victim to it.
Beatified by Pope Paul VI on 1 November 1975, he was canonized in the city of Santo Domingo on 11 October 1992 by Pope John Paul II, who wished to present him to the world as a model of shepherd and missionary in the Fifth Centenary of the evangelization of the Americas.