Leonardo Córdova is a commercial engineer and lives in Valparaíso (Chile), with his wife Paula, with whom he has been married for 33 years and together they are parents of three children, but if there is one thing that defines him, it is being a “24×7 deacon.”
A few weeks ago, the Pastoral Commission of Bishops (COP) appointed him director of the National Commission of the Permanent Diaconate.
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The permanent diaconate It was rescued by the Second Vatican Council from the Tradition of the Church because, although it was in force for centuries, it fell into disuse in the Middle Ages as a permanent ministry, subsisting as a transitional status towards the priesthood, as the document recalls. The Diaconate: Evolution and perspectivesprepared by the International Theological Commission in 2002.
The Second Vatican Council was the most important ecclesiastical event of the 20th century. Pope Saint John XXIII encouraged him to seek the updatethat is, the updating of the Church to bring it closer to today’s world. It began in 1962 and concluded during the pontificate of Pope Saint Paul VI in 1965.
Although Leonardo Córdova’s diaconal ordination was five years ago, he has been working in the Church for more than 30 years, in different pastoral issues, both with the Franciscan brothers, in his children’s school, and with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, also in the accompaniment of marriages, and other tasks.
Although he had been told about the diaconate in his youth, it was not until about 12 years ago that he began his formation, after a community, through its parish priest, asked his wife for consent to become a permanent deacon.
What differentiates a permanent deacon from a committed layman?
In an interview with ACI Prensa, Leonardo comments that, although there are many tasks that a permanent deacon shares with a committed layman, the difference is in the “sense of service.”
“There is a special relationship of the deacon with the prayerful reading of the Word, with the liturgical prayer of the Church, and there he places all his work of service, a service with a special availability for people who feel—or who are—more far away.”
Following the Pope’s invitation to go out to the peripheries, and from his own discovery of the vocation, the Chilean deacon considers that “service to people is the most relevant thing.” In that sense, he lists the three dimensions that seem to him to be the most important for the life of the permanent deacon: “the service of charity, of the word and of the altar.”
Service in the existential peripheries
For Leonardo, “there are communities that, regardless of the presence or not of priests, are further away, so it is easier for a person who comes from the world of family or work, to make a credible testimony from those places.”
As an example, he gives the work environment: “You can work in a bank and you can be with your life, with your testimonies, serving and accompanying people.” That, he assures, “is its own dimension that is different from the priest.”
“The priest is ordained in relation to the Eucharist, the center and culmination of our life; the deacon is ordained for service,” he clarifies. “The central thing for me is this following of Christ, servant of the brothers.”
“We have a possibility, an opportunity in the relational world, creating a community, working collaboratively with other actors,” he acknowledges.
“The Pope has also told us on repeated occasions: the Church does not have to arrive first, it has to arrive together with everyone. And in this ‘arriving together with everyone’, today we have a task, because each of the deacons has his office, his profession, his area of expertise in some knowledge, which can put it at the service of the Church,” he highlights, whether with a profession or a simple trade.
Be a “deacon 24×7”
“I am a deacon 24×7, I get up and go to bed at the end of the day a deacon, it is not just a liturgical service,” he distinguishes.
That is his great motivation, he highlights: “It is a constant service and it is a service in which there is a family, and it is with the family that one is part of that testimony. First of all, our wives who accompany us.”
“We are married men, fathers, men who have and suffer the same difficulties and problems as any man, father of a family, such as taking care of work, the reality of unemployment, the uncertainty of today’s life,” he lists.
In that sense, he points out the importance of “being and appearing to be deacons 24 hours a day, not when I dress.” Let others not realize that he is a deacon by seeing him at the altar, but because he serves “from the moment he rises until the moment he lies down.” The deacon “transmits with his life, with his family, with his joy of living the presence of God in all areas,” he summarizes.
“Today in Chile we have between 1,170 and 1,200 deacons,” explains Leonardo, who provide their service in different realities and in “a multiplicity of approaches to the life of the Church.” In each place, “one finds tremendous wealth,” he says.
In the image of Saint Lawrence, serve “the wealth of the Church”
Within the framework of the celebration of San Lorenzo, patron of deacons, Córdova recalled the image in which the saint “appears before the Roman authority saying: ‘Here I bring the wealth of the Church’ and takes all the poor behind him. , to the lame, to the blind, to the orphans, to the widows.”
“He lives a very strong process of discovering, from the Gospel, that the richness of the Church is being at the service of those who, from another perspective, are despised.”
“What is this richness that we can present today?”, Córdova asks and answers: “That we are in the middle of it to go along this path together, of this Church that wants to be a servant Church, a close Church for everyone, a Church that is capable of opening itself and putting itself at the service, walking with everyone.”
“No one is superfluous and no one is less important”
“The body of this Church, this body whose head is Christ, is not complete if all the ministries and all the charismas that the Spirit is giving in such an abundant way are not present.”
“The ministry of the pastor, of our bishops, is very necessary, but it is not enough on its own. Our priests are so essential… but the Eucharist has the greatest meaning when the bread is broken, distributed and shared. The ministry of deacons, and the charisma that is abundantly distributed among all people, every man, woman, every child, every elderly person, every sick person… everyone has a part in the construction of this Church, which we are doing together. ”.
“No one is superfluous and no one is less important: we all have all the importance, everything that concerns man belongs to God,” he concludes.
Juliet Villar
I am a journalist, with a degree in communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non-governmental organizations. Since 2016 I have been dedicated to Catholic journalism, first at the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as ACI Prensa correspondent for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.