Leo XIV: A perfect connoisseur from Spain, who visited on different occasions

One of Robert Francis Prevost’s obligations, from the day before yesterday Leo XIVduring his stage as a prior general of the order of San Agustín (from 2001 to 2013, two legislatures of six years each), was to know and visit the different houses that the order has distributed throughout the world. And on Thursday, when his name was announced from the balcony of San Pedro, social networks in Spain were filled with reminders of their visits to our country, to which the new pontiff came several times. There are at least consigned A dozen of occasions in which the future Leo XIV was in a country that, according to the father Argimiro Martínez Fuertesprior to the community of San Agustín de Madrid College“Know perfectly.”

Already in 2002, Prevost visited Lion on the occasion of the centenary of the College of the Augustinian parents. From that stay it is remembered now that he department with students, teachers and former members of the school and celebrated a Eucharist in the chapel of the school. The same year was in Oropesa (Toledo)on the occasion of the canonization of San Alonso de Orozco, as the Archbishopric of Toledo himself has remembered in his networks. A year later, the new Pontiff moved to Lou (Biscay)in whose school P. Andrés de Urdaneta was on December 9 and 10, 2003.

The Augustinians of the Santo Tomás de Villanueva School of Valencia They remember their visit to the city in the 2005-2006 academic year, and the “great impression” that he left in them “to move forward with evangelization.” The Agustinas convent of Sant Mateu (Castellón) and the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art and the Monastery of San Sebastián (the two in Orihuela, Alicante) are other points of the Valencian Community where Pope was today, who also traveled in 2005 to Saragossa (Parish of Santa Rita).

Leo XIV was in Andalusia In 2007. He visited the Los Olivos school in Malaga; the San Agustín College of Seville during the celebration of the IV Congress of the Spanish Language of the Spanish -speaking Augustinian schools; and traveled to Huelva -Mantenía a great relationship with the vicar general, Emilio Rodríguez– On two occasions, one of them on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Monastery of the Agustinas in the convent of Santa María de Gracia.

The 40th anniversary of the Augustinian theological study was the occasion chosen by Robert Francis Prevost To visit, in 2008, Valladolid, in a day with the slogan ’40 years at the service of the church in Valladolid ‘. The new Pope intervened in the closure of the commemoration with the then Archbishop of Valladolid, Braulio Rodríguez.

In 2010, the San Agustín College of Madrid, located next to the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, welcomed the then Agustino Prior. “He was in some class, with the teachers and with a group of people who work with us in our pastoral work -he said to EP the director of the center, Ildefonso Trigueras. He is a very pleasant person, in a few words, he listens a lot, but he has the timely word »,

Also in Madrid He visited Major schools Elías Ahuja and Mendel, both run by the Agustina Order. The then director of the first, Josemaría Torrijosremember that he was with him «in his office, chatting both alone, and then we went to the dining room of the school for lunch. He was an educated, very discreet and smiling man. He had a very concrete and exact vision of the problems of the order and the problems of the Church in general; It seemed like a very practical man ».

The new Pope was also in 2011 in Bilbaofor the ordination of the Bilbao priest Miguel Olaortuadestined for the diocese of Iquitos (Peru); And four years later he visited privately Pamplona on the occasion of a young priest of his diocese, Edward Tocto. And the last visit consigned is Ávilain whose Basilica of Santa Teresa de Jesús it was last September. Other destinations outlined on social networks are Ceuta,Mallorcto,Palencia (For ordination as a bishop of Manuel Herrero in June 2016) or Salamanca.