Chilean who died in Milwaukee is on path to sainthood
A humble Chilean engineer who died more than 50 years ago in Milwaukee is one step closer to sainthood.
The news has infused renewed energy into a Catholic community with deep roots in the Milwaukee area.
“It’s a great joy,” said Sister Isabel Bracero, a Waukesha-based religious sister in the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement.
“He lived what we promote very strongly, which is everyday sanctity,” she said. “That in order to become a saint one doesn’t have to do anything extraordinarily outstanding or extreme.”
Following a declaration by Pope Francis last month, Mario Hiriart — who died in 1964 after a sudden terminal cancer diagnosis — is now considered a Venerable Servant of God.
The Catholic Church found Hiriart lived a life of “heroic virtue” in his work bringing young people to the Schoenstatt Movement, an educational movement known for its devotion to Mary.
Hiriart was sickly for most of his nearly 33 years, developing painful brain tumors in his childhood that required multiple surgeries, according to a documentary about his life. But he was known for his generous spirit and selfless nature.
Despite his daily suffering, he was one of the key leaders of the Schoenstatt movement in Chile, often organizing camping trips to bring youth into the fold. An engineering professor, he prayed with his students before exams and kept an ever-present smile, his biographer Isabel Margarita Gonzalez said in the documentary.
“He never complained,” Gonzalez said. “What everyone remembered most about Mario was his smile.”
While studying in Brazil, Hiriart grew deeper in his faith, writing he wanted to be the “unknown Schoenstatt saint.”
As his health declined, Hiriart embarked on a trip that would be his last.
The Rev. Joseph Kentenich, who founded the movement in Schoenstatt, Germany, was in the midst of a 13-year-long exile in Milwaukee, counseling German-speaking families at St. Michael Parish. He had been accused by some of being an agitator.
Hiriart went to visit him, intending to travel on to Germany after an emergency surgery at St. Mary’s.
But the prognosis was grim. Hiriart had just days to live.
“Very simply, without any drama … or sense of tragedy — just like an engineer, with few words,” friend Alejandro Foxley recalled in the documentary. “He told me: I have cancer, and I think I’m going to die.”
Hiriart died July 15, 1964. The campaign for his sainthood began three decades later in 1998.
Focus on faith, not pain
Anyone can draw inspiration from Hiriart’s life and the way he understood God’s work in the world, Bracero said. When so much about his health was out of his control, he found comfort in God’s influence over his life, she said.
Hiriart did not sit back and wallow in his pain, instead diving deeper into his faith.
“He continued trying to find ways of how we could penetrate the world with our spirituality,” Bracero said.
Today, the Schoenstatt movement counts a couple of hundred Milwaukeearea families in its ranks, and religious sisters run a retreat center in Waukesha.
Southern Wisconsin is deeply embedded in Schoenstatt history: Madison served as the first home for the religious sisters’ North American headquarters, and they moved in the 1970s to the Waukesha site.
Hiriart died the night before construction crews broke ground there, Bracero said. He’s memorialized by a cross bearing his name in the retreat center gardens.
Hiriart’s new status as “venerable” puts him at the same point in the canonization process as two other Schoenstatters: the founder, Kentenich, and Sister Emilie Engel of Germany.
In order to be beatified — the next step — an individual needs to have one miracle attributed to their intercession. Sainthood would require a second miracle.
Community members will now renew prayers to Hiriart, asking for miracles.
The church has recognized Hiriart’s faithful life, Bracero said. “Now, so to say, God has to speak.”