On March the 1st Br Enrique Gonzalez Arango, of the Province of St. Paul the Apostle, in Colombia, after 66 years of religious life and 58 years of priesthood returned to the House of the Father.
Br Enrique was born on the 21st May, 1933 in Manizales, Caldas, Colombia. From his mother, Josefita he inherited tenderness and delicacy in dealing with people. When he turned 12 in 1945, he discovered that he wanted to become a Franciscan friar. He felt this call whilst reading a booklet that a professor lent him at the Institute, when he saw a blurred image of St. Francis of Assisi and where his life and thoughts were recounted in just five lines.
In 1954 he arrived at the Nazareth seminary in Cali. Here he distinguished himself for his cheerfulness, for his gift for singing, as a great orator and a great friend. He was a man of great faith in Jesus, a lover of the Word of God and a lover of Franciscan spirituality, a true Friar Minor.
On the 6th January, 1958, he professed forever to "live the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the style of Francis and Clare of Assisi." On the 4th December, 1965, he was ordained a priest by Monsignor Rubén Isaza Restrepo.
He was appointed professor of philosophy at the Virrey Solís school in Bogotá. Then he was assigned to the education of young novices in the friary of Bogotá. Since then, his passion has been education. In 1966 he was appointed professor at the St. Solano School in the city of Armenia. In 1967 he was vice-rector of the San Francisco de Asís college in Ubaté, and in 1968 vice-rector of the Agustín Gemelli college in Manizales. In 1979 he left school and continued to work in poor Colombian communities, both in education and social work.
On the 15th July, 1982, the Vicariate of St Paul the Apostle was established, whose option was to live in socially and ecclesiastically marginalized places, and Br Enrique was part of this new Franciscan entity. From 1982 to 1986 he was Vicar Secretary and at the same time Vice-Master in the postulancy of the Vicariate.
He carried out his missionary service in several places on the outskirts of Colombia. Then, from 1996 to 2000 in Cali, he worked as an assistant to the Conceptionist Sisters. Here we find another gift that the Lord had given him: to accompany those in contemplative life. In 1996 he began to be an assistant to the Federation of Conceptionist Monasteries of Colombia. The Conceptionist Sisters of Cartago wrote this about him as follows: "He was the one who loved us the most, he gave everything without holding back anything, his intelligence, his wisdom, his exquisiteness in sharing knowledge, his overflowing joy and his evangelical poverty, which we always admire amongst the many other virtues, with which the Lord adorned him; For all this, we express our eternal gratitude to him."
In 2001, Br Schneider, at the end of his service as Assistant General pro Monialibus in Rome, proposed Br Enrique as his successor to the Minister General, stating: "He is the best assistant for contemplatives in the Franciscan Order." This service allowed a Franciscan minstrel to arrive at the General Curia. His chivalry, his contagious joy, his songs, his sayings, his Fraternity, his Spirituality, his very human sense filled with Franciscanism the General Curia and all the Monasteries to which he was brought by the spirit of Francis and Clare and their beloved Franciscan Province of St. Paul the Apostle.
Our Minister General, Br Massimo Fusarelli, testifies to this as follows: "I had the grace to share with him six years in the fraternity of the General Curia and I learned to appreciate his gifts of humanity, joy, serious and profound preparation and love for the Poor Clares and Conceptionists. He was an important point of reference for us for his wisdom and his humour, which was always very lively. In him we have seen fulfilled the words of Saint Francis: Blessed is the religious who finds no joy and happiness except in the most holy words and deeds of the Lord and, through them, leads men to the love of God with joy and happiness. (Adm 20: FF 170)".
He managed to overcome two strokes which, upon waking, he expressed with his good sense of humor by saying that "God was calling him in installments." These incidents encouraged him to write a small book, which he entitled: Anthology of Life Thoughts, a collection of phrases, some famous, others by authors not very well known, and some by his own authorship.
On Friday, the 1st March, 2024, he lived his own Passover of the Lord, he was visited by Sister Death, and even though he was not fond of l the expression birthday, he liked to celebrate life. That is why he said, "I am not old, but I have life." For this reason, by celebrating life, you have found it in its fullness, at the age of 90, in the city where your "Manizales of the soul" was born.
With the contribution of Br Nelson Tovar Alarcón, Minister Provincial
© Photo: El Quindiano
