My résumé:
Father Pablo was a student from elementary school at the Real Monasterio de Santa Isabel school. One of the two schools that Regnum Christi has in Barcelona. He was also a member of all four stages of ECYD and in 2005 he made his commitment to Regnum Christi.
After finishing school (2008), he entered the novitiate of the Legionaries of Christ in Salamanca, Spain. At this center, he also completed his humanistic studies (2010-2011). He then moved to Rome, Italy, to study a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the Ateneo Regina Apostolorum (2011-2013). From 2013 to 2016, he carried out his apostolic practices as an ECYD assistant and training instructor at Everest School in Curitiba, Brazil. During that period, he also supported vocations pastoral work in that area. From 2016 to 2018, he returned to Rome to study a licentiate in philosophy at the Ateneo Regina Apostolorum. On August 20, 2018, he made his perpetual profession in Rome. Subsequently, he began his bachelor’s degree in theology (2018-2020) at the same Ateneo. During the 2020-2021 school year, he carried out another pastoral period in Washington D.C., USA, where he was an ECYD assistant. In 2022, he completed his bachelor’s degree in theology at the Ateneo Regina Apostolorum in Rome, Italy. On July 9, 2022, he was ordained a deacon in Barcelona, and after his ordination, he arrived in Brasilia to begin his diaconal and later priestly ministry, serving as director of ECYD and assistant to the youth section of that area.
My testimony:
The calling that God made to me to give my life serving Him as a Legionary priest came during the Holy Week missions of 2008. I was on mission in some villages in the Aragonese Pyrenees, along with some friends from the Regnum Christi youth section in Barcelona, and the priest in charge of the missions asked me to accompany him, along with a collaborator—who is now a Legionary priest—to visit some towns and inform the locals about the Holy Week liturgy schedules. The collaborator and I arrived in a town and found a man sitting at the entrance of his house. We gave him the information the priest had asked us for, and he looked at us in astonishment, telling us that in that town, Holy Week had not been celebrated for a long time due to the lack of priests in the region. Learning that in Spain—a country with the highest number of missionaries on the planet and evangelizing half the world—there was a shortage of priests left me perplexed and worried. It was then that God began to invite me to leave everything and follow Him.
The missions ended, and I returned to Barcelona—the city where I was born and raised—to finish my last year of high school and to prepare for university, and my vocational restlessness grew increasingly.
To understand what God was asking of me, I increased the frequency of spiritual direction and acts of piety, because it is in the silence of prayer where God’s voice is best heard.
The hardest thing was telling my family and friends that during the summer of 2008, I was going to the seminary candidate program to have an experience in the seminary and see if God was truly calling me to the priesthood. Having the support of my family and friends was fundamental. I have always been convinced that it was thanks to the fertile ground (family and Catholic friendships) I received that God was able to plant the seed of vocation, and now, after fourteen years as a seminarian—years full of experiences, challenges, and learning—the seed has grown and is now ready to bear fruit through the sacrament of Holy Orders, which I will receive on Saturday, April 29.
I conclude this testimony convinced that God does not choose the prepared, but prepares His chosen ones. How true Saint Paul was when he said in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you.”
Dear reader, if you have reached this point, I thank you and ask you to pray an Ave Maria for all priests, especially for those of us who will be ordained, so that we never forget that the most effective way to reach Jesus is through His Mother Mary.
“Ad Iesum per Mariam”.
