MY TÍO ABUELO

I was nine years old the first and only time that saw my grand uncle (in Spanish, my tío abuelo), Father Francisco.  He was pastor of the Roman Catholic parish of Zapotiltic, Jalisco, Mexico, a small mountain village not far from the Colima Volcano.  When I met Fr. Francisco during the summer of 1955, he was 67 years old.  As a nine-year boy, I would not have understood the significance of my encounter with him, a man who changed the lives of the entire village and surrounding villages.  I had no idea of his strengths, his great accomplishments and, sadly, his almost insurmountable problems and suffering.

Now, after several trips to Zapotiltic beginning in 2006, I have begun to appreciate his great sacrifices and accomplishments during his 50 years as a priest between his ordination in 1908 and death in 1958.  When I visit Zapotiltic, the first thing that I do is visit the church that dominates the town square. I walk through the six-story-high columns adorning spacious wide portico of the Templo del Señor del Perdón (Church of Our Lord of Forgiveness.  In Mexico churches are often referred to as “temples.”).  I enter the church, passing through the basilica-like narthex into the nave, an immense area that can seat up to 2,000 churchgoers.

After genuflecting toward Jesus in the Tabernacle, my gaze is caught by the soaring inner columns reaching toward heaven.  I then turn my eyes toward the sanctuary where, raised high in the apse is the large, sculpted, crucified Christ known by all as El Señor del Perdón.  He is crowned with a solid gold crown, affixed to a Holy Cross, arms outstretched in the perpetual gesture of a priest in prayer.

The church was designed by my grand uncle.  The church was also the source of the biggest source of suffering for him, physical and emotional, that may have hastened his death.

It took 12 years to build the church – beginning in 1944 when the design of the Templo del Señor del Perdón first began to take shape in the mind of my grand uncle until its completion and dedication in 1956.  A tremendous amount of talent, labor, and funds were involved.   However, in order for this project to come to a successful conclusion Fr. Francisco Vizcarra Ruiz met many hurdles along the way.  He managed to overcome all the usual issues that accompany a major construction project – all, that is, except the last problem, which may have hastened his death.

I will describe those problems in greater detail in the NOTES which follow this one.  Father Francisco’s concept was given shape by forward-looking Mexican architects and engineers when he suggested using modern materials – steel reinforced concrete – instead of the traditional stone blocks and mortar.  In the 1940’s a church was built of stone.  But my grand uncle insisted on his concept design of a church built of concrete with soaring walls and capable of seating up to 2,000 persons at Mass, as witnesses and Archdiocesan records reveal.  Inside or outside, the church leaves a definite statement that this is a House of the divine God combined with touches of earthly power and grandeur.  This grand church structure dominates Zapotiltic, today a Mexican mountain village of 27,000 but which in the 1940’s had less than 10,000 residents.

My grand uncle hired three degreed professionals, and sent a small cadre of men to Mexico to learn the relatively new construction technique of building with steel-reinforced concrete.  The rest of the workforce for this magnificent building was voluntary.  Fr. Francisco used his God-given talents to inspire and manage a huge labor force of volunteers to do the work as it progressed week after week, month after month and year after year, for more than a decade.  The church sits exactly where the former parish church sat.  So the mammoth project had to begin with the demolition of the old, earthquake-torn church.  My grand uncle had an innovation for that, too.  In the 1940’s no one had heard of using staged dynamite explosions to quickly, and safely, demolish a building.

The task of removing many tons of debris and rubble of the demolished, nearly century-old church fell to volunteer workers.  They came from Zapotiltic and surrounding villages.  Volunteers were called to work through thousands of hours of faenas (hard, sometimes difficult job tasks). Daily, the laborers arrived by the hundreds, riding in convoys of tens of dozens of trucks, ready to work.  It took months to perform the first difficult task –  hauling away the debris and rubble from the demolished solid stone church.

Then the work of building the new church began in earnest.  The laborers were all men, working from before sunrise to well into the evening.   Of course those unpaid volunteer laborers received support from their families who provided moral and “logistical support” like carrying their supplies and needed tools from point to point as required, and, of course, bringing food and water. Additionally, thanks again to Fr. Francisco’s gift for inspiring people to roll up their sleeves and get to work on seemingly insurmountable projects, some of the heavy construction equipment was donated by nearby companies, some of them multi-national corporations.  I have hundreds of pictures showing all of the various stages of work and volunteers.

Click this link to view some of the extensive set of photos captured by one of Fr. Francisco’s “majordomo” assistants, Señor Guillermo Martinez Hernandez.  The family kindly allowed me to use copies for publication on this blog.   I thank the family for allowing me to view and copy these pictures.

While the design and construction of this church is the culmination of the many brave accomplishments of my grand uncle, those familiar with his story also remember his suffering, his mortifications, and the many crosses he carried so close to his death.

As I said, I was nine-years-old the first time I remember visiting Zapotiltic.  We lived in the United States.  Every other year my Dad would drive our Pontiac sedan on a month-long trip to visit relatives and friends, mostly in Monterrey, San Luis Potosi, Mexico City and Guadalajara as well as Zapotiltic and Colima.  Sitting in the back seat I remember the wide and good Mexican highways on the way to Monterrey, Nuevo Leon from Laredo, Texas – the beginning of the “Pan American Highway.”  But also, I remember the not-so-good narrow roads in 1955, especially as we threaded our way through the mountains.  The most memorable narrow roads usually wound around mountainsides with dizzying views of valleys below.  Las cumbres Dad called them.  Every once in a while we came to single-lane bridges where the contest of “who goes first” was decided by the driver who blinked his headlights first.  Cows and mules sometimes greeted us on the “switchback curves” but a honk of the horn soon resolved the problem.  And of course there were the baches – potholes, a universal condition of mountain roads, I guess.

In the 1950’s the Holy Liturgy Mass was celebrated in Latin throughout the world.  As an altar server in the United States, I would regularly wake up before sunrise to go serve as an altar boy at early morning Mass before going getting a quick breakfast and then attend classes at the Catholic school elementary school I was attending at the time.  That is why, during our visit to the town in Southern Jalisco, Zapotiltic the summer of 1955, I gladly accepted the invitation from my tío abuelo to serve as altar boy at the 5 a.m. Mass that he celebrated every morning in the Santuario de Guadalupe, a small historic chapel adjacent to the site of the regular church.

After Mass, I distinctly remember we walked to the door, which he opened, and standing just inside the church he raised his arm and pointed out the door toward some construction equipment that I could dimly perceive in the quiet darkness of the 5:45 a.m. dawn.  I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something like,

“See that?  We are building a new church here.”

He did not step into the street.  He remained inside the Santuario.  He politely declined my Dad’s invitation to leave the church and have breakfast with us.  That was the first and last time that I saw my grand uncle, Father Francisco Vizcarra Ruiz, now known as Francisco V Ruiz.  I did not think much about his words, and how he never stepped outside the church that morning.  Now I know the reason which I will explain in subsequent Notes on this website.

Go to my SECOND NOTE