Jose Gregorio Hernández to be beatified, ceremony lead by Cardinal Pietro Parolin
Seven decade long campaign finally reaches it's goal, Venezuelans celebrate this moment
The well-known, doctor, professor, scientist, and scholar of bacteriology Jose Gregorio Hernández to be beatified this Friday in a ceremony lead by Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
Jose Gregorio Hernández, who is famous as “the doctor of the poor,” for over a century now, is known for his extraordinary service to the people of Venezuela. He had become a religious icon after his death by an accident in the year 1919.
The seven-decade-long campaign of millions of Venezuelans finally completes with this ceremony of beatification of the doctor.
The beatification is seen as a step toward sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church. The ceremony will take place on Friday, culminating 72 years of struggle by Venezuela’s Catholics.
The ceremony was initially planned at a stadium, but considering the current outbreak of a pandemic, the organizers readily changed its venue to a small chapel at a Catholic School North of Caracas. The event accommodating around 300 attendants, mostly comprising of priests and nuns.
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, will be leading the ceremony.
The upcoming beatification will “does not change things at all,” expresses a fellow Venezuelan, “for me he has always been a saint.” Hernández believed that “medicine was a priesthood of human pain,” tells his friend, Luis Razetti, also a prominent Venezuelan doctor.
Hernández who served all his life, treating the needful, even died, at age of 54, when he was hit by a car in Venezuela, while he was crossing a street, to take medicines for a poor old woman. Today millions of Venezuelans remember him for his great service.
In February 1996, when Pope John Paul II visited Venezuela, he had received a petition signed by around 5 million people asking to he declare Hernández a saint by making his veneration official.
The decree for the beatification was signed by Pope Francis. This Thursday, in a video message he said, “I am aware that these prolonged hardships and anguish have been aggravated by the terrible pandemic of COVID-19 that affects us all. I have very present today so many dead, so many infected by the coronavirus who have paid with their lives. I also have in mind all those who have left the country in search of better living conditions, and also those who are deprived of freedom and those who lack what is most necessary.”
Under Francis’ tenure as pope, the much-strained relations between Catholic leaders and socialists government improved dramatically.
“The beatification of Dr. Hernández is a special blessing from God for Venezuela, and invites us to work toward greater solidarity with one another, to produce among all the response of the common good so needed for the country to revive, to be reborn after the pandemic, with a spirit of reconciliation,” Pope Francis shared in his video message, this Thursday.
The beatification is taking place at times when many Venezuelans are struggling to feed their families, as a result of COVID-19, among other factors, of rising essentials prices. Huge population residing here in the country suffer from moderate or severe food insecurity, referencing a 2020 report of the United Nations World Food Program.