Madrid, Spain, Feb 2, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The Spanish daily El Mundo recently published an interesting collection of testimonies of uncommon religious vocations: widows and widowers, with children and grandchildren, who have become priests and religious.
In the article entitled, “The reservists of the Church,” reporter Jose Manuel Vidal presents testimonies like that of Father Manuel Villa, married during 35 years, with 4 children and 12 grandchildren, “who left his job as a truck driver to become a priest. Since 1996 he has been a priest in Valladolid.”
Another case is that of Francisco Sanchez Alias, 74, who was supervisor at a company with more than 1,500 employees. One day he and his wife were in a car , in which she perished. “When Francisco regained consciousness he was in the hospital without his wife. ‘I asked about her, and after they avoided me for a while the doctor came and told me she had died. At that moment religious life flashed in my mind.’ Four years later, he became a Cistercian and today is Abbot of the Monastery of La Oliva in Navarre,” the paper reports.
The 2nd Lieutenant