92-year-old priest forgave his father’s murderer after his ordination

Father José Manzano García-Fogueda, priest of the Archdiocese of Toledo, remembers how he forgave his father’s murderer on the day he was consecrated on the 70th anniversary of his priestly ordination.

In a interview given to the Diocesan Radio Television channel of ToledoFather Manzano has reviewed some episodes of his life as a priest, among which stands out how he attended the arrest for the subsequent execution of his father during the Spanish Civil War and how he came to forgive the murderer, thanks to his mother.

Born in 1932, in the middle of the Second Spanish Republic, in which anti-clerical policies were deployed that led to the burning of churches and convents, Father Manzano remembers playing marbles when some men took his father away.

“I was playing marbles when he walked past me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I just ran to see my mother. Oh, mother, they are going to kill father! “She explains. His mother tried to calm him down. But little José was convinced that he was going to end his life and replied to his mother: “Yes, they are going to kill the fat ones,” because, in his innocence, he thought that since his father was “a little thick.” “, they were going to take his life: “For me, they were going to kill the fat people, because that’s what I heard.” In fact, they shot him. He was a local merchant, an ironmonger, who had been a councillor.

Years passed and he grew up in “a sad home, but with a lot of love. Sad, but we all love him” in which her mother, whom he considers a “martyr of the war” was the pillar, because she had “a fabulous supernatural spirit.”

Until he was ordained a priest, with papal dispensation given his youth, his mother always prayed with him every night and they did the examination of conscience, which he still performs before going to sleep.

With the arrival of the national troops to the area, little José immediately placed himself at the disposal of the priest who was with the soldiers, Father Redín, SJ. He had not yet received his First Communion. He was six years old. Then he continued serving Father Andrés García, the parish priest.

At the age of 9 he entered the Minor Seminary and, from there, he went to the Major Seminary, finishing his ecclesiastical studies at the age of 21. Thus, they asked the Holy See for dispensation to be ordained before 24, the minimum age established at that time.

The ordination took place in the private chapel of the archbishopric on September 18, 1954, at the hands of Cardinal Enrique Plá y Deniel.

His father’s murderer died in the arms of the priest

That night, Father Manzano’s mother approached his bed as always. She asked him if he was already a priest and if he would know how to forgive from that moment on. The neopresbyter answered affirmatively. Then his mother told him the name of the person who had murdered his father. “He left me standing, he left, he left without saying anything to me and I did not sleep that night because of the impression of already being a priest, the joy of being one, and because of what my mother had told me.”

The impression was not only because he knew the name, but because, as a child seminarian, Father Manzano had brought food to that man for years. “My mother always sent me to this man to bring him something. And whenever she came back, she (she asked me): -What did she tell you? -I say: Nothing, he started crying. He almost always burst into tears.”

Years later, this man died assisted by Father Manzano: “He died in my arms. It was my first visit after becoming a priest. The next day, when I got up, I went to visit him and gave him a hug. I am sure that he would have died for me and I am sure that I would die for him. That’s for sure, for sure,” he explains.

Priestly Year of the Archdiocese of Toledo

The Archdiocese of Toledo celebrates precisely this 2023/2024 academic year, a Year of Priests convened on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the pastoral letter A new and free seminar of Cardinal Marcelo González Martín, under the motto Witnesses of divine mercy.

Father Carlos Loriente, vicar for the clergy of the archdiocese, explains to ACI Prensa that in this time, about 1,000 seminarians have been trained in the classrooms of the Toledo Seminary, among whom the Catholic Church has also been nourished by more of twenty bishops at this time.

“The fruitfulness of Don Marcelo’s seminary is due to a double reason. On the one hand, his exquisite fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church, both for his direct participation in the sessions of the Second Vatican Council, in which he had notable interventions, and for his deep communion with the successor of Peter, whose teaching he always considered would serve for a renewal of the institution of the seminary that would respect that impulse for reform in continuity with the previous tradition,” he details.

To them is added that Cardinal González “did not hesitate to bring the best professors of the moment to teach in our seminary, and he took special care of the role of the spiritual directors in formation, pointing out a way of life in which they combined discipline, science and prayer in a very balanced way.”

The Year for Priests closes a trilogy of years dedicated to lay people, consecrated persons and priests that, after the Jubilee of 2025, will lead to a diocesan synod, the first convened in the Archdiocese in this century.

In the opinion of Father Loriente, “this priestly year has helped us to revive the specific call to priestly holiness. Which is holiness that flows very significantly throughout the People of God as a whole. Our priesthood serves so that the faithful live the common priesthood they received at baptism.”

The Toledo Seminary, “especially blessed”

Asked how the Toledo Seminary is going to face the reforms urged by the Dicastery for the Clergy after the apostolic visit to the Spanish seminaries, the vicar assures ACI Prensa that “thank God, our seminary has been especially blessed and we have no pressures.” by the number of seminarians in the formative community. It is a large but not excessive group to carry out the challenges of personalizing training, with attention to all its dimensions.”

In the Archdiocese they therefore expect “a good harvest of calls for the next year, in addition, so that the propaedeutic stage will also be within the demands that the Dicastery has asked of our bishops.”

“We entrust this process to serve this very important mission of forming the priests of tomorrow, a particularly demanding time, which demands more than ever the preparation and search for holiness of pastors,” he concludes.