The heart of a Jesuit martyr

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The open-heart bypass surgery was scheduled to last about four hours. My brother had been wheeled into the operating room to start the risky procedure, so his wife and I went to find the nearest church in downtown Buenos Aires to spend some quiet time in prayer. We walked four blocks and saw the Jesuit parish church, the Iglesia del Salvador. It had been a long time since I had resided in my home country of Argentina; I had been living in the United States for 30 years, but I returned home often to see family and friends.

Although I had been educated in the Catholic schools of Buenos Aires and was a devotee of St. Ignatius Loyola—Ignatian retreats made an impact on me in my youth—I had never entered this particular church. I had passed by it many times, and I knew about its school and university next door, which was founded in 1868 by the Jesuits.

At this moment, I was gripped by a feeling of extreme stress: As a physician trained in a cardiovascular hospital, I knew exactly what could go wrong with my brother’s surgery. I was contemplating that life-threatening moment in the operation when the extracorporeal circulation is halted, and the heart is left to pump on its own the adequate volume of blood to keep the myocardium healthy. There is a risk that a slow response in the pumping will make the myocardium suffer ischemia (a low flow of oxygen) that could severely damage its integrity, with potentially serious medical consequences.

So I leaned into this opportunity for prayer and emotional comfort. We walked into the church and marveled at the frescoes depicting the story of Jesuit evangelization and martyrdom in the South American missions. I had read about the French Jesuit martyrs of North America, and I knew there were other martyrs, Spanish Jesuits, in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. Even so, I had to admit that I did not even know their names, much less their stories of martyrdom.

Yet there they were in the frescoes—like a cloud of witnesses—radiant with their holy and innocent expressions along with their names: Fathers Juan del Castillo, Alonso Rodríguez and Roque González de Santa Cruz, the latter of whom was the first saint from Paraguay.

A Jesuit priest named Father Daniel came to greet us, walking down the aisle with a warm smile as if he had known to expect us. Seeing our expressions of wonder, he asked if this was our first time in the church; we confirmed it was.

Despite the splendor of the art, my mind was still gripped with frightening images of a potential myocardial damage that I envisioned could be happening at the hospital. Then Father Daniel gently asked us, “Have you seen the intact myocardium of Father Roque González de Santa Cruz?”

I heard his words and, all of the sudden, an overwhelming sense of calm and wonder filled me. I felt peace about the outcome of my brother’s surgery and knew that he was being watched over by this holy saint, who had been previously completely unknown to me. “Where?” I asked.

Father Daniel pointed to a small chapel at the right side of the entrance to the church, where the relic of St. Roque González was kept in a glass reliquary. As we walked together to see the relic, Father Daniel told us the story of the saint’s life and his martyrdom on Nov. 15, 1628.

The son of a Spanish noble and a native Guarani mother, St. Roque was born in Asunción, Paraguay, but he abandoned a life of privilege and instead embraced one of dedication to service and evangelization among the Guarani people of the region. He was a conquistador with a cross instead of a sword. He taught the Guarani about Jesus, and he educated them to seek heaven to better serve their brothers and sisters. St. Roque was fluent in the Guarani language, which he had learned from his mother. He founded 15 Jesuit missions in the northeast region of the upper Paraná River.

The martyrdom of St. Roque came at the hands of local shamans. He was attacked when he was working on the construction of a belfry for a new chapel. It was a slaying that filled the locals that he had served so piously with deep sorrow. The shamans ordered that the body of St. Roque be burned and his heart taken out to ensure that he was dead. But according to witnesses, his heart was not consumed by the flames and, in addition, kept beating in the fire. His astonished disciples retrieved it from the ashes, and it has remained intact for four centuries.

And now the heart of St. Roque lay in the display case in front of me. It still held the power of life and evangelization, announcing its presence at the very moment when I most needed faith and consolation.

I now reflect with gratitude on the impact that this serendipitous walk to a nearby church on a fear-filled morning had on my life and that of my family, an unexpected blessing. Besides strengthening my faith in an almighty God who loves us and takes care of our needs before we ask him, this encounter brought me closer to the life of St. Roque. In fact, it inspired me and my husband to visit the ruins of the San Ignacio Mini mission complex in the Iguazu region. Here among the still-standing stone buildings constructed by Guarani labor, we heard from the local guide that on the last Good Friday before our visit, the heart of St. Roque had been carried in procession throughout the place we were visiting, making for another close encounter with his life and the lasting presence of the Jesuit spirit in those hallowed lands.

My brother was inspired to read about the life of this new patron saint we had discovered. I also learned that three of my brother’s employees were Paraguayans and had been praying for the intercession of St. Roque, who was the patron saint of Borja, the hometown of one of the employees. They had been praying for the health of my brother, whom they had come to know as a friend as well as a boss, and upon whom their sustenance depended. One employee, who was from Borja, brought me a St. Roque prayer card when I told her the story.

And I learned that Pope Francis, when he visited Asunción in 2015, had prayed before the heart of St. Roque, for whom he has a special devotion.

I began this journey simply looking for a church in which to find a moment of peace. But in my encounter with St. Roque I also found a new saintly model and companion who opened my eyes and my heart to the wonder of God’s love in the martyrdom of the Jesuits of the Rio de la Plata, and to their living and loving impact on our lives and faith.

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The heart of a Jesuit martyr

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