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On Oct. 15, I had the privilege of representing the Order at St. Peter’s Basilica for the canonization of our brother Knight, Bishop Rafael Guízar Valencia. St. Rafael Guízar was one of many brother Knights in Mexico during the last century who struggled to defend the Church and minister to the Catholic people during the persecution of the Church by the Mexican government.
For many years, St. Rafael Guízar disguised himself as a street peddler, a musician and even a doctor in order to minister to the sick and dying in his diocese. In 1915, when the Mexican government ordered that he be shot on sight, he escaped to the United States, then to Guatemala and Cuba. Four years later, he was named bishop of Veracruz, Mexico. Known as the “Bishop of the Poor,” he gave away almost all his possessions, including his pectoral cross, ring, shoes, cassock, hat and coat to help the needy.
When the government closed his diocesan seminary, St. Rafael Guízar moved it to Mexico City, where it continued to operate clandestinely for 15 years. He said, “a bishop can do without a miter, a crosier, and even a cathedral, but never without a seminary, because the future of his diocese depends upon the seminary.”
In the life of this saintly bishop we see shining clearly the pastoral witness of the Apostles. We rejoice that another brother Knight has been raised to the honors of the altar and we find in him great encouragement for our own works of charity — especially our programs to promote vocations to the priesthood and support seminarians. Through his intercession, we pray that our own charitable works will be an increasing blessing to those in need.
More than 40 years ago, at the close of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI spoke about the council’s meaning to the bishops who had just completed their work. He said that the council had been a time of encounter between two great religions: the religion of the God who became man and the secular religion that viewed man as if he were a god. He said that this encounter could have been a time of condemnation, but instead the council had chosen a different path, responding to modern secular culture by, in effect, proclaiming the Church of the Good Samaritan. The Catholic Church, he said, was united in charity to every man and woman throughout the world, whatever the person’s condition. And like the Good Samaritan, the Catholic Church would serve those in need wherever they were encountered. Was this not exactly the witness of St. Rafael Guízar?
Four decades after the Second Vatican Council, Pope Benedict XVI issued his great encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), which we might describe as the encyclical of the Good Samaritan.
Last August, we chose as the theme for our 124th Supreme Convention, “Charity, Unity and Fraternity: Living Deus Caritas Est,” to manifest our solidarity with the Holy Father and rededicate ourselves in a special way to the first principle of the Order.
In doing so, may all of us follow in the footsteps of our newest saint and brother Knight, St. Rafael Guízar Valencia, in presenting to our needy — and sometimes hostile world — the Church of the Good Samaritan.
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