BIOGRAPHY
José Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, better known as the priest Brochero, was born on March 16, 1840 in Villa de Santa Rosa, north of the province of Córdoba (Argentina). His parents were Mrs. Petrona Dávila and Mr. Ignacio Brochero and he was the fourth of ten siblings, who lived from the rural labors of his father. They formed a family with a deep Christian life and two of his sisters were nuns. He was baptized the day after he was born in the parish of Santa Rosa.
At the age of 16, on March 5, 1856, José Gabriel entered the “Nuestra Señora de Loreto” seminary in the city of Córdoba. At that time the seminarians studied in the Latin Seminary and other ecclesiastical disciplines, but the other subjects had to be taken in the classrooms of the University of Trejo and Sanabria. It is in that house of studies where he will have as comrades and will win his indeclinable friendship later prominent people such as Dr. Ramón Cárcano, governor of Córdoba and first biographer of the famous priest.
During his years as a seminarian in Córdoba, José Gabriel got to know the Retreat House run by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. He personally experienced the effectiveness of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius and effectively collaborated with the priests who lead them. Thus, very soon, with the authorization of his superiors and much to his liking, he became a “doctrinero” and a “lector” during the Exercises, that is, the right arm of the priest responsible for them, a task he carried out, according to what those who said they knew him then, with skill and dedication.
On November 4, 1866, the Bishop of Córdoba conferred the presbyterate on him, after which the first three years of his priesthood were spent in the city of Córdoba, serving as coadjutor of the cathedral church. At the end of 1867, the first outbreak of cholera broke out in Córdoba, killing more than 4,000 lives in a short time. These were days of terrible affliction, panic and mortality never seen before in the capital and throughout the province. This difficult occasion tested the zeal of the young priest who lavished himself entirely, unceremoniously risking his health and life in favor of his neighbors. A witness of those moments explained it later: “Brochero left the home where he had barely entered to dedicate himself to the service of suffering humanity and in the population and in the campaign he was seen running from sick to sick, offering the dying religious consolation, picking up his last word and covering the misery of the bereaved. This has been one of the most exemplary, most dangerous, most fatiguing and heroic periods of his life”.
On November 18, 1869, Don José Gabriel was assigned to the department of San Alberto, on the other side of the Sierras Grandes. San Pedro was the head of the department and the young priest arrived there, after three days of traveling on a mule through the mountains; but after some time and by personal will, he settled definitively in the Villa del Tránsito, today called Villa Cura Brochero in his honor. His parish was immense, it had an area of 4,336 square kilometers, with more than 10,000 inhabitants who lived in distant places without roads and without schools, isolated by the Sierras Grandes of more than 2,000 meters in height. The moral state and material indigence of those people did not discourage Don José Gabriel’s apostolic heart, but from that moment on, he dedicated his entire life not only to bringing them the Gospel, but also to educate and promote them.
Soon he had traveled all over his parish on a mule, and he was beginning to get to know his parishioners, many of them for the first time in their lives seeing a man in a cassock. He visited them to find out about his needs and invited them to go to mass on Sundays, where he spoke to them in picturesque and transparent language. Many agreed and consented to cover the distance of eight, ten, fifteen leagues, which separated them from San Pedro. The young priest was winning them over, and he soon saw that his chapel was too small for the Sunday crowd; and he set to work building a real church, which he did with the sole help of the people.
The year after he arrived, he began taking men and women to Córdoba to do the Spiritual Exercises. Traveling the 200 kilometers required three days on the back of a mule, in caravans that often exceeded five hundred people and more than once were surprised by heavy snow storms. Upon returning, after nine days of silence, prayer and penance, his parishioners were changing their lives, following the Gospel and seeking the economic development of the area.
In 1875, with the help of his parishioners, he began the construction of the Exercise House of the then Villa del Transito. It was inaugurated in 1877 with batches that exceeded 700 people, passing through it, during its parish ministry more than 40,000 people. On the last day of the exercises, the priest said goodbye with a meat with leather and the following words: “Well; go no more, and beware of offending God by going back to your old ways. The priest has already done what was on his side to save them, if they want. But if anyone insists on condemning himself, let a thousand devils take him…”.
Forming a group with her, he built another house for a school for girls, and brought from Córdoba the religious Slaves of the Heart of Jesus, to whom he entrusted the care of both. The fame of the College and the Exercise House spread throughout the region and schoolboys and practitioners came from the most remote places in the province of Córdoba and even from San Luis and La Rioja. And although it is not correct to remember a priest for the external works he did, since the intensity of love and apostolic fruitfulness are not always what can be seen and measured, in the case of this holy priest we cannot forget many other works that he did for the good of the Church and the poor, such as ditches, bridges, water intakes for irrigation, dikes, etc.; he applied to the authorities and obtained couriers, post offices and telegraphic stations; he projected the railway branch that would cross the Traslasierra Valley joining Villa Dolores and Soto to get his beloved mountain people out of the poverty in which they found themselves. With his parishioners, he built more than 200 kilometers of roads and several churches, founded towns and cared for the education of all. He preached the Gospel assuming the language of his parishioners to make it understandable to his listeners. He celebrated the sacraments, always carrying what was necessary for Mass on the back of his mule. No sick person was left without the sacraments, for which neither the rain nor the cold stopped him, “the devil is going to steal a soul from me,” he said ironically. He also said: “The priest who does not have much pity for sinners is half a priest. These blessed rags that I wear are not the ones that make me a priest; If I don’t carry charity on my chest, I won’t even become a Christian.” He gave himself entirely to everyone, especially to the poor and distant, whom he diligently sought to bring closer to God.
After thirty years as a parish priest in the mountains, the Bishop of Córdoba, Fray Reginaldo Toro, named Brochero canon of the cathedral church so that he could enjoy a necessary rest and recover his broken health. On August 12, 1898, he took the oath as a canon, but the canonry did not last long because on September 1, 1902, he resigned to take charge of his beloved parish again. Except for the three years in which he served as canon of the cathedral of Córdoba, Don José Gabriel always lived in his mountain parish: More than forty years preaching the Gospel by word and example and contributing like no other to the progress of that area isolated and neglected.
A witness to his canonization process stated: “His word was direct and simple. Everyone understood and liked her, Brochero was one more countryman among countrymen, a wide-brimmed black hat with a small cigarette between his lips, an indefatigable gentleman on a mule, he toured his parish day and night. Everyone knew him as he knew everyone, and although his time was short for ‘reciting rosaries’ -as he liked to say- he always found the one he needed to stop along the way”. His qualities were those of the Creole: hard-working, austere and ingenious, and as a good Creole, he also had his defects: mischievous, which is not the same as lively and foul-mouthed. On one occasion, preaching in the city of Córdoba before a distinguished audience, he said in his most typical way: “You are used to rich sweets -he was referring to the sermons of the other priests-, but now I am going to give you a stew the Creole, which, although it is not a delicate dish, is more substantial”.
He expressed himself bluntly, with plain frankness, to the people of the land he spoke with figures of the land, without detours or using difficult words. During his rides and trips he also gave himself to silent and continuous prayer from which his preaching would later spring. His long periods of prayer before the Eucharist, as well as his love and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, gave him that depth that is typical of the word that springs from contemplation and then expands in apostolic action.
He also knew the pain of trials in his intense apostolic life: criticism and misunderstanding from some priests, nuns and faithful; indolence of some rulers in the face of requests for collaboration from him, particularly his unfulfilled dream of the railway, and finally his leprosy and his loneliness, in which he unexpectedly discovered the fruitfulness of his dedication as a priest. On February 2, 1908, almost blind and deaf, ailing and with the terrible disease of leprosy to the surface, he resigned from his parish, unable to care for it. With admirable resignation he embraced the heavy cross with which God wanted to test his laborious old age and his last years were an eloquent chair of profound virtue. In those hard moments, referring to his blindness, he said: “I am very satisfied with what God has done with me relatively sighted and I thank him very much for it. When I was able to serve humanity, he kept my senses intact and robust. Today, when I can’t anymore, one of my body’s senses has been disabled. It is a very great favor that God our Lord has done me to free me completely from active life and leave me the occupation of seeking my end and praying for men past, for those present and for those who are to come until the end of time. world.” He piously delivered his soul on January 26, 1914 in his Villa del Tránsito. His remains, by his wish, rest in the chapel of the Retreat House, he wanted to lie there so that the exercitants would pray for him. He was there until 1994, when he was transferred to the Cathedral of Córdoba. On the slab, white and simple, that perpetuates his name, there is this brief inscription, a synthesis of his life and his work: “Perseverans atque…