Comment by Fr. Amando Llorente, SJ
Comment by Fr. Amando Llorente, SJ
(Brother of Fr. Segundo, director of the Agrupación Católica Universitaria)
If I wanted to find the formula that made such a full life and such a holy death possible, I think we could find it in that Segundo’s way of being, his character, his personality, were so perfectly in tune with the Ignatian ideal that the day who met him said: This is my thing! and I lived it fully.
When we Jesuits want to talk about Saint Ignatius, we say the Ignatian magis: magis, a Latin word that means more. San Ignacio always looked for the most; not the good, but the best; not the glory of God, but the greater glory of God; not to serve our Lord, but to excel in the service of our Lord. He always the most. And Segundo was born for the most.
When he was fifteen he told my father: I want to go to the seminary; I want to be a priest. Almost certainly, because the village priest was the most important character, and Segundo wanted to be important: To stay with everyone else, and be one of the people… Here, the one who stands out is the priest, the priest. .. I’m going to the seminary!
He went to the seminary of the diocese of Len. And being in the seminary, a Jesuit arrives and gives the Exercises to the seminarians. And when doing the Exercises, the Second says: How am I going to stay…? I, Jesuit! While in the novitiate, a missionary from China passed by and spoke to the novices: What are you going to do in Spain? In Spain, the one who is condemned is because he feels like it; he has all the means to save himself: he has churches, he has priests, he has everything… But there are thousands and millions of pagans who have never heard of Jesus Christ…
That conversation was enough for Segundo to say: To the missions! And if you have to go on missions, which is the most difficult? At that time Pius XI had written that the Alaska mission was the most heroic task in the Catholic Church, and Alaska entered Segundo’s heart and soul and illusion and ideals… and no longer it was more than Alaska!
But Alaska did not belong to him as a Jesuit. He told the provincial that he wanted to go to Alaska… Alaska? Where is that? What do you paint in Alaska? Well, okay, that’s a very good fervor, but keep studying Latin and Greek… .
Oh yeah? Letter to the father general, the famous father Ledochowski, who governed the Society of Jesus for almost forty years and left an indelible mark as a general of the Company: I, Segundo Llorente, who am now nineteen years old and am beginning to study philosophy,… want to go to Alaska!
The Father General answered him like the Provincial: Keep being a good student, prepare to be a priest, and then go where your superiors send you… .
Very good. Segundo let the year pass. The Exercises of the second year returned; and Saint Ignatius says in the Exercises to make a choice, he returned to the choice; and in the election he felt: Alaska!
Second letter to the Father General: I still think that my thing is Alaska…. Then the Father General replied: I see that you have a missionary vocation. But his province has missions in China…. But China… didn’t appeal to him. I waited another year; he was in his third year of philosophy, he was doing it in Granada, at the age of twenty-one. He writes another letter to the father general and tells him: I follow the same thing; I just did Exercises; before our Lord I am sure that God calls me to Alaska; therefore, I beseech you, father general… .
The father general saw an indication of God’s will and replied in his own handwriting: With this letter of mine goes another to your provincial and another to the provincial of Oregon, who is in command in Alaska, so that, if your provincial thinks it’s right, and if the doctor approves and sees that you can handle the Alaskan weather… .
Segundo was not afraid of a medical check-up. He recounted that the doctor told him: If anyone can resist the Alaskan cold, it is this boxer; because Segundo was tremendously strong, tremendously vigorous, with health that lasted up to three months before he died; in forty years in Alaska he never lost his health.
So get ready for Alaska. Of course, goodbye to the whole family forever; there was no return from there – my brother never saw my parents again, nor did my parents know him as a priest nor could they ever hear his mass-…
Yesterday I was reading a letter that he wrote to me many years later telling me what it cost him to say goodbye to the family. Second said to me:
“When I passed by the house and saw you, I didn’t want to say anything to you, but inside I was convinced that I would never see the homeland again. I remember one day while I was taking a nap in an upstairs room, or playing with the little ones down there and I cried profusely. Once again I was given the choice between staying there mending nets or following Jesus. Fortunately, relictis retibus, secutus sum Jesum; leaving the nets, I went with Jesus… Again At the school in Havana, when going down with the suitcase to go to the American ship, which was bobbing in the bay, a boy from the school, who had just arrived, was stopped at the gate where he wanted to escape home, and when he was stopped he cried heartbroken calling his mother. I shuddered all over and, without being able to avoid it, I felt my eyes fill with water; we were both in such a position; he as a child, regretted the absence of a week, I, grown up, rambled on the absence for life.”
At the age of twenty-three, alone and without knowing a word of English, he went to the United States to study theology in Kansas City. There he spent four years of study; and, as soon as he was ordained as a priest, in 1935, at the age of twenty-eight, he left for Alaska.
Since Segundo was always an inspiration and an ideal for me, in 1953 I felt the need to see him and find out where he was and what he was doing. I committed the great folly and imprudence, for which I am now enormously glad, of surprising him without consulting him, in the middle of February.
So I launched into what was a beautiful epic. At the end of a long and difficult journey I fell into the hut of an Alaskan missionary. To my evident astonishment when I saw that, he told me:
How do you like my house? It seems a little small, doesn’t it? And a little cold… Well, this is a palace; and see when you see where your brother lives!.
He received me as a guest, to stay there. I told him: I come to see my brother. And he tells me: Oh, you’re already in Alaska. Here there are no days, nor weeks, nor months. Communications are over. If you’re as lucky as the bishop was last year about this time… he came to see me and had to stay here because of a snow storm that lasted twenty-nine days; Miraculously, we didn’t starve: by chance, I had some frozen salmon, and that’s what we ate… We couldn’t leave the hut or go anywhere. Twenty nine days!
To sleep, we put some bear skins on the floor and lay down. He tells me: Be careful how you put your feet, so that the door is not impeded; because at night anyone can enter. Easily some Eskimo, of those who wander around with their sleds, may need to enter. The door must always be open, because it is life or death; It’s a rule in Alaska that no one locks their door, in case someone needs to get in at night.
Already lying on the ground, I hear that the dogs begin to bark in a terrible way, a snow wind, some imposing howls in the distance… What is that? They are the wolves, they are hungry. That’s why dogs bark… I had come from Havana, and I thought: This is good! But he also told me: Until I see it, I won’t turn back; I’m dying, but I see my brother.
I finally made it. In the middle of the tundra, everything was night (because in February everything is night in Alaska), in the middle of that valley of snow I see my brother coming towards me.
We wanted to hug each other but we couldn’t, because we were both dressed as astronauts; and we shook hands with incredible emotion. It was a fantastic meeting.
(When I held his hand, shortly before he died, I remembered so much of that first time that I had held his hands in the snowy tundra, still a young man…).
We threw ourselves on a bunk and started talking. What is talked about in those moments? Do you think we talked about theology? Of the Company of Jesus? Father, mother, brothers! How is this one? How is the other? He didn’t know anyone: And this one, how is he? And this one, how is he? What does this one like? Then he said: Now we are going to tour the town, house by house, I can tell you where all the residents of the town lived, and even the names of all their dogs. We were going through names like this… You skipped one! he said.
I asked him: But, Segundo, what are you doing here? Do you want to save souls? Come to… There are 15,000 souls to save. Hey, the souls of the Cubans are worth the same as those of the Eskimos at least, right? And he answered me: How do we like to say that the Church is catholic, universal, that it has to be everywhere! The Eskimos are also children of God, and I have had the privilege of being their missionary. Here is the Catholic Church, thanks to us missionaries.
In these comes the pilot who had taken me and says: I’m leaving. And Second: Loving, you will see what you do; if you stay, when can you leave? Nobody knows. I take my sled and I don’t have a problem, but you, how do you get out of here? This is the opportunity.
Four hours! After having spent four days looking for him…
He added: We are going to say mass for our parents. We said the mass; It was very moving, because we were in Akulurak (the last word that was understood by my father when he died was Akulurak, where his eldest daughter was: she was not there with him, but she had him in her heart).
We said mass and I had to take the plane and leave.
He identified himself in such a way with the Eskimos that, when the State of Alaska grew and became free, the first elections came; and Segundo Llorente came out representing Alaska, because the Eskimos had elected him. My brother immediately sent a letter saying that he was resigning, that it would not be appropriate. They told him not to resign, since it was the first time the Eskimos had voted and it was setting a bad example for them not to accept; that he didn’t look at it as an honor, but as a way to serve.
When Alaska got oil-rich, they didn’t know what to do with the whites who had been there for so many years, who, after all, were responsible for making it what it was. So they made the Alaska Founders Club. The condition was to be white – come from abroad to work in Alaska – with thirty years of service in Alaska, and have done something important. Unanimously elected president: missionary Segundo Llorente!
What did he do in Alaska with the Eskimos? A father at Gonzaga University told me: I asked his brother once: “Father Llorente, what did you do in Alaska for forty years?” And as I told him in the tone of “why did you waste so much time there”, he replied: “I spent forty years teaching the Eskimos… to make the sign of the cross. And with that I am content.”
God our Lord used him, not so much to do good to the Eskimos, but so that from there, with the talent that God gave him as a writer, he would begin to write letters and articles that became books; There came a time when seminaries and novitiates were filled with enthusiasm for the adventures of the Alaskan missionary. I have found dozens and dozens of nuns and priests who have told me:…