At Madrid in Spain, Blessed Manuel González García, bishop, who, an outstanding pastor after the heart of the Lord, promoted devotion to the most holy Eucharist with the utmost diligence and founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Nazareth.
Lifespan: 1877–1940
Beatified: 29 April 2001 by Pope Giovanni Paolo
Canonized: 16 October 2016 by Pope Francis
Memoria liturgica: 4 January
For my steps I seek only one path: the one that leads to the Tabernacle, and walking along that path I shall meet the hungry and the poor and bring down upon them the joy of Life.
LIFE AND WORKS
Manuel González García
was born in Seville, Spain on 25 February 1877, to Martín, a carpenter, and Antonia, a homemaker, both devout Christians. He was baptized on 28 February in the parish church of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle and confirmed in the archdiocesan palace by Cardinal Ceferino González; he received his First Communion in the church of the Schools of Saint Louis. He was subsequently admitted to the College of Saint Michael, where the Cathedral Chapter oversaw the careful literary, moral, and musical education of children selected for the choir. Manuel was chosen to be part of the honored group of “Seises” of the Cathedral.
From childhood his dream was to become a priest. Unknown to his parents, in agreement with his parish priest, he took the examination to enter the seminary, where he was admitted in October 1889, at the age of twelve. An exemplary seminarian, he was distinguished by his piety and dedication to study. One of his favorite sayings was: “If I were to be born a thousand times, I would become a priest a thousand times.”
On 21 September 1901, in the chapel of the archbishop’s palace, he was ordained a priest by the Cardinal of Seville, today Blessed Spinola. Yet at the beginning of his priesthood there was a key experience that definitively crystallized his pastoral ideal: his first mission to Palomares del Río and his encounter with that first abandoned Tabernacle. A decisive experience to which one must turn to understand his specific eucharistic vocation:
I remained there for a long time and there I discerned my plan of mission and the courage to carry it out… I can affirm that that evening, at that hour before the Tabernacle, I glimpsed for my priesthood a mission that I had never before dreamed of.
From 1902 to 1905 he was chaplain of the rest home of the Little Sisters of the Poor. In this pastoral service his plan was already traced out in accordance with his personal vocation, discovered at Palomares del Río.
On 1 March 1905 he was appointed vicar-economist of the parish of Saint Peter in Huelva, and a few months later archpriest of that Andalusian city. The situation in which the parish population lived is well represented by a phrase found in his collection of pastoral anecdotes: “My God, a parish of twenty thousand souls without daily communion!”
The religious landscape was indeed desolate, and the social situation also presented an alarming character; anticlericalism, socialism, and Protestantism had assailed the city.
Cardinal Spinola had not wished to conceal from him the grave concern that Huelva aroused in his pastoral heart. He did not order him to go there, but invited him to succor that population, the most needy and difficult in his diocese.
The desires of my superior are commands to me. When do you wish me to go there?
This was the response of the young priest, who had just turned twenty-eight. In ten years, through his social and eucharistic works, he succeeded in transforming the face of the parish and the city. He became renowned throughout Spain for his zeal and apostolic initiatives.
On 4 March 1910, at Huelva, he founded the Work of the Three Marys and the Disciples of Saint John for the Tabernacles-Calvaries, called to give and seek companionship to Jesus in the Eucharist, especially where He was most abandoned. It spread not only in Spain but also in America, and arrived first in Cuba. Today it is present in various nations. The Work, begun with lay members, grew with new foundations: the Eucharistic Reparation of Children and the Eucharistic Reparative Youth. With further foundations, he completed what he called ‘my Eucharistic Family’: the Diocesan Eucharistic Missionaries (1918), the Eucharistic Missionaries of Nazareth (1921), and the Secular Eucharistic Missionaries of Nazareth (1933).
At Huelva he wrote his first book What a Priest Can Do Today, which for a long time was the manual of spirituality for Spanish and Latin American seminarians and which is still in demand; and he also founded, on 8 November 1907, the journal The Grain of Sand.
On 6 December 1915 he was appointed titular bishop of Olympus and auxiliary bishop of Málaga. His episcopal consecration took place on 16 January 1916 in the cathedral of Seville. On 20 January 1917 he was appointed apostolic administrator of Málaga and the.
22 April 1920, diocesan bishop. In his episcopal ministry, the Eucharistic dimension remained ever unchanging:
I wish that in my life as Bishop, as before in my life as a priest, my soul may grieve for only one sorrow—the greatest of all, abandonment of the Tabernacle—and rejoice for one joy only: the Tabernacle lacking no companionship.
And he devoted himself with passion to the arduous task of building a new seminary, a wondrous fruit of his heroically living faith. In Málaga he neglected no opportunity for the evangelization and “eucharistization” of the diocese.
On 11 May 1931, groups of revolutionaries burned nearly all the churches of Málaga and set fire to the bishop’s palace as well. He courageously confronted the crowd and surrendered himself, but they let him go. He took refuge with a priest along with his family members and the Sisters of the Cross, and then with a friendly family outside the city. Since the revolutionaries blackmailed those who harbored them, he found himself forced to flee on 13 May 1931 to Gibraltar, where he was received by the Catholic bishop and lodged in the Gavino Rest House. From then on he began to serve and govern his beloved flock from the sorrowful distance of forced exile. On 26 December 1931 he returned to his diocese, establishing his residence in Ronda. In October 1932 he went to Rome for the visit ad limina.
Meanwhile the authorities of Ronda publicly committed themselves to preventing the Bishop’s return to the city. Upon his return from Rome he visited the Nuncio in Madrid to tell him that he was willing to return to Ronda even knowing that he would be killed.
In November 1932, fearing for his life, the Holy See ordered him to withdraw temporarily to Madrid, where he remained until 1935. From there he continued to govern his diocese of Malaga and devoted himself to the eucharistic works he had founded.
On 5 August 1935, after resigning from the diocese of Malaga, he was appointed bishop of Palencia. Don Manuel submitted to the will of the Holy Father with complete readiness, and said thus to Monsignor Tedeschini:
Monsignor, I hunger to serve the Church according to the pleasure of my superiors. This alone.
Only for three years and three months would he remain in Castilian lands, where his sole preoccupation was the glory of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
I offer myself as a small, smiling victim, and I wish to be the vicar of the Heart of Jesus at Palencia.
In these last three years of his life he devoted himself to promoting at every level contact with his diocesans, gave new impetus to all eucharistic works, founded a eucharistic magazine for children, and showed special attention to the seminary and the priests. His entire ascetical program remained condensed in this recommendation to his sisters:
The greatest fidelity! The greatest silence! And the greatest obedience!
In September 1939 he fell gravely ill. On the following 31 December he was transferred to the Rosary clinic in Madrid, where he died in the odor of sanctity on 4 January 1940. He was buried in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament of the Cathedral of Palencia.
I ask to be buried near a Tabernacle, so that my bones after my death, like my tongue and my pen in life, may always be repeating to all who pass by: “There Jesus is! Jesus is there! Do not leave him abandoned!”
For his eucharistic apostolate he became known as “the bishop of the abandoned Tabernacles,” since this was always his programmatic aspiration: “To be the Bishop of consolation for the two great desolate ones: the Tabernacle and the people.” Blessed Manuel González was one of the most representative figures of Catholicism in Spain during the first half of the twentieth century. A prolific writer of vibrant and direct style, he published more than thirty works, especially of a eucharistic character and of catechetical pedagogy.
The Course of the Cause
a) In view of the Beatification
On 2 May 1952 the informative Process was begun at Palencia, concluded on 12 September 1960. On 21 November 1965 his writings were approved. From 20 November to 3 December 1979 a supplementary Process was conducted at Málaga, and from 20 November 1981 to 3 May 1983 a cognizional Process. On 31 July 1984 all the Processes were declared valid.
The Particular Congress of Theologians took place on 23 May 1997, and the Ordinary Session of Cardinals and Bishops on 3 February 1998.
On 6 April 1998 Pope John Paul II promulgated the decree on the heroic virtue of the Servant of God.
The process on the alleged miracle (miraculous healing of a woman from tuberculous peritonitis that occurred in December 1953) was conducted in Palencia in 1997 and declared valid on 15 May 1998.
The Medical Commission of the Dicastery, in its session of 3 December 1998, discussed the case and obtained a favorable opinion regarding its scientific inexplicability. On 9 April 1999 the Congress of Theological Consultors took place, which gave a positive result, confirmed on 1 December 1999 by the Cardinal and Bishop Fathers in the Ordinary Session.
On 20 December 1999 the Decree on the miracle was promulgated.
The beatification liturgy took place in Rome on 29 April 2001.
Toward Canonization
Toward canonization, on 30 September 2009 the diocesan tribunal was established in Madrid for the canonical inquiry into an alleged miraculous healing from non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), plasmoblastic, with IgA lambda restriction, monoclonal, that occurred in Madrid in 2008.
On 29 October 2015 the Medical Commission unanimously recognized the scientific inexplicability of the healing.
On 15 December 2015, the Special Congress of Theological Consultors of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints convened to examine the theological aspects of the alleged miracle. The consultors unanimously rendered a positive judgment, recognizing in the event a miracle wrought by God through the intercession of Blessed Manuel González García.
The Cardinals and Bishops, in their Ordinary Session of 1 March 2016, judged the case to be a true miracle attributed to the intercession of the Blessed.
Pope Francis, on 3 March 2016, authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the Decree on the miracle.