San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Priest, 100, nudged from parish
Soon after milestone, word came he was returning to Spain
BEAUMONT — The priest needed a hand while tugging on layer after layer of vestments. He carried a magnifying glass to help him read a handwritten list of prayer intentions. But as he jingled a bell to let the congregation know that Mass was beginning, he abandoned his walker and cane, singing along with the choir as he ambled up the aisle toward the altar.
“He knows the difficulty of our life — it’s not easy,” the Rev. Luis Urriza said in Spanish, describing Jesus’ familiarity with the struggles of his followers.
“He has been tested in all manners,” Urriza said. “Exactly like us.”
In fact, Urriza faced a test of his own, perhaps his most daunting. At age 100, nearly 70 years after he had established the humble Cristo Rey Parish to nurture a small but burgeoning Latino community in southeast Texas, he was now being forced to leave it behind.
Not long after his birthday in August, the Catholic bishop of Beaumont told him that the time had come. Another, younger pastor was taking over at Cristo Rey. His order was sending Urriza off to a new assignment in Spain, his home country, to join other priests serving in a church near Madrid.
He did not want to leave. His parishioners organized a march hoping to persuade the bishop to change his mind. “Viva Cristo Rey!” they chanted. “Viva Padre Luis!” But the decision stood.
This was the test — of the vows of obedience he had taken eight decades ago and in his trust in God’s will.
He believed it was a divinely charted trajectory that led his mother to take him to a monastery in Spain when he was 12 and that ultimately brought him to Texas. Now, he was being uprooted again. He hoped that he would be steered in a direction where he could keep working and be useful, even if others expected him to rest.
“God does things you don’t understand,” he said. “Maybe they need me over there.”
When he turned 75, Urriza handed in his resignation, just as every Catholic priest was required to do. That was in 1996. From then on, it was up to his superiors to decide each year whether he would continue as pastor of Cristo Rey.
Twenty-five years later, he has, undeniably, slowed down, but he regularly
gets around without his walker or cane. The first few steps are the hardest, but then he gets going. He sometimes grasps for words in English, but he blames that on decades of speaking mostly Spanish. He still prepares his own dinner in the rectory, stirring a splash of oil from Spain into his canned chicken noodle soup before he microwaves it. Just three years ago, he stopped driving himself around on errands and to visit the sick at the hospital.
Urriza bristles at the notion that his advanced age makes him unsuited to lead his parish. “I’m here doing what any priest who is 40 or 50 years old would do,” he said.
“There is a reason why we don’t still run companies or businesses or parishes at 100,” said Bishop David L. Toups of the Diocese of Beaumont. He described Urriza with his congregation like a “grandfather with his children, with his family, growing weaker.”
The Catholic Church in Beaumont is experiencing a generational shift. Toups, who arrived last year, is 50.
The pastor of the cathedral in the diocese retired this year after 41 years of priesthood, and the longtime pastor of another parish died in August at 87.
On Oct. 17, Urriza led the congregation through prayers at the Sunday morning Mass one final time.
After communion, parishioners commandeered the microphone. “I know your hearts are pounding,” one man said. “We have Father Luis in our hearts, and he’ll always be present here with us.”
“Even though I won’t be here,” Urriza replied, “I’ll never forget you.”