Francisco Javier Acero, new auxiliary bishop of Mexico: “We can all give a lot to the Church from our sphere, every difficulty is an opportunity for growth”

We are at the Saint Augustine School in Valladolid, where you spent twelve years of your childhood and adolescence. What does the place evoke for you?

This School Saint Augustine is the scene of the best memories of my childhood. Here I forged friendships and also my own vocation, nurtured first in the family and already lived intensely in the College. Back then we were truly a family, we all knew each other here. I forged great friendships in what was then Basic General Education, which today coincides with part of Primary and the first years of ESO. My group was the one corresponding to the letter C. Later, with the Baccalaureate, the ties were less intense; quite a few transferred to public institutes and the relationship was lost.

Here in this School I made my First Communion and I have a good memory of my stay here since I was a child, since I arrived in September 1975, I had not yet turned three years old. I remember the color of the bus, the stop close to home, the teachers who accompanied us on the journey, so many teachers over time: Pilar Álvarez and Pilar Usano, Paquita, Adrián, Isidro, José Antonio Gómez, Enrique Pachon, Lorenzo del Amo…

As for the Augustinian Recollect community, from those years I remember with special affection the presence of the religious in the patios who established a friendly relationship in the patios: Fray Enrique Hernández putting up the nets and painting the fields with chalk; Fray Cirilo de Esteban, Fray Francisco Javier Jiménez, Fray Santiago Sánchez, Fray Marciano Santervás… They asked you how you were doing, they took an interest in you, leaving the, let’s say, institutional.

What led you to enter the seminary?

A small group of my class was very struck by the fact that on the top floor there were some large bedrooms to which “external” students were prohibited from going up because that belonged to the “internal” students, to the seminary. The adventure was to manage to stay a few days at school and access that “forbidden space”.

Another type of restlessness appeared when the Recollect missionaries came and went through the religion classes to tell us about their lives, their tasks, their world. I remember Fray José Miguel Panedas showing us slides from the Children’s City in Costa Rica; of Fray Juan Antonio Flores talking about the mission of Lábrea, that he left us with our mouths open with a black stone used to cure stings, amazing and unusual.

In the midst of this atmosphere of curiosity and admiration, a small group of five of us decided to tell Fray Santiago Sánchez that we wanted to learn more about the life of the friars and spend more time in the school. I was the only one who persevered a little longer and they invited me to the

pre-seminar and everything went on from there. My parents didn’t believe it and agreed with my grandfather, who predicted that I would come home for Christmas and wouldn’t last much longer.

But you continued, and the next step was Colegio San José de Lodosa.

In comparison it was a very different time to Valladolid. It was a smaller center, with a greater relationship with the religious and also with more personalized care and attention. I was in Lodosa between 1989 and 1992. My generation was the last of the two minor seminaries of the Province in Spain, Valladolid and Lodosa. Times were changing very fast and the very idea of ​​the “minor seminary” succumbed to reality.

What do you remember about your novitiate experience?

In Monteagudo, in my year of novitiate, there were seven of us, with the unusual peculiarity that four —the majority— had English as their mother tongue. It was a time of joy; I remember Fray Jesús Lanao (master) and Fray Amado García (vice-maestro), Fray José Luis Goñi (prior), Fray Aurelio Ripollés or Fray Francisco Martínez… It was a beautiful community. Fray Ángel San Eufrasio had the role of integrating and facilitating communication between the two cultures, Anglo-Saxon and Latin.

Personally, I consider that it was a year of growth, of opening my mind, of discovering that in my religious life I would have to adapt to the circumstances and peculiarities of other places beyond my world of origin.

In Marcilla, already as a professed religious, you studied philosophy and theology.

Those of Marcilla (Navarra) were six years of total changes. I have good memories of the community and I am very grateful for the accompaniment that I had in the first two years with the teacher of the professed students, Fray Miguel Miró. Today, from another perspective and with other knowledge, I better understand the change that he led, in the face of a worn-out formative structure in the centenary theologate. The formation team was reduced, a more personalized accompaniment of the trainees was arbitrated…

On the other hand, in those years the convent underwent the second largest structural change in its history, with works of great proportions. All this represented difficulties, system changes, certain tensions… And there is always a lesson: with patience and time, a person can achieve almost any adaptation.

What did solemn profession and priestly ordination mean to you?

Perpetual or solemn profession is a total consecration to God and to the Augustinian Recollect Family. I must say that in reality the Augustinian Recollect identity I think comes more from here, from this Saint Augustine School, where every day I saw the Augustinian heart and book, the Saint Ezekiel Moreno of the reception room.

My biggest dream in the last years of initial formation was to see the large number of places where I could live and work. Even before ordination I dreamed of working outside of Spain, my parents were younger, I was very young, I was willing and I liked the novelty.

On July 31st, a few hours before the ordination, in the halls of this Saint Augustine School, the prior provincial told me that my destination would be Mexico City, the ministry of the Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe de los Hospitales. Of that house and task I did not know more than what I read in the chronicles of the internal magazine of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine, OAR Al Habla.

In Mexico you have collaborated in the parish and educational apostolate, in social projects and in public communication. What would you stay with?

It is difficult to choose a field because each one has its characteristics and they all enrich. The Hospitals Parish was like a University of life: illness and death make you cling to God, they lead you to a strong spirituality; your priesthood and your religious consecration take on that sense of service to God and the vulnerable. In this harsh reality I identified myself with the People of God and with his service.

The socio-sanitary project Center for Accompaniment and Recovery of Integral Development (CARDI) came from that concern. At the end of the day I went home to have a warm dinner and I saw the relatives of the sick who did not have a safe place, a toilet, a decent space, preparing to sleep on cardboard.

The CARDI became a reality not without effort. Today we see its structure, how it trains volunteers… But the great difficulties to start it up made me grow. Anything that is wanted to be undertaken in a religious Order is usually slow, before becoming a reality it must permeate everyone. There is also the danger of personalism, of thinking that each new project is a matter of one or two and not of all. Today CARDI is a reality and the right thing to do was to develop it; and it not only helps people, it also helps the Church and the Order.

I also remember the years dedicated to the educational apostolate at the Fray Luis de León College in Querétaro as very intense. Everything happens in a school, it’s life itself. I fondly and enthusiastically remember the implementation of technological education.

And from Querétaro I also remember with special enthusiasm the Augustinian Recollect Spirituality Center, the sowing of Recollect values and identity, or the television production company whose content reaches 22 countries today.

What experiences has allowed you to be vicar of Mexico and Costa Rica for seven years?

I must thank, above all, that I had some great advisers and the help of an external accompaniment. Consecrated life has its population pyramid inverted and this was a great challenge. There were other challenges: few young religious who do not always take on responsibilities as expected; relational difficulties in the communities… And the superior cannot always face everything correctly.

What can you tell us about the International Solidarity Network Augustinian-Recollect ARCORES?

ARCORES Mexico has been, above all, a family experience. The cloistered nuns, the Augustinian Recollect Missionary nuns, the religious, the laity through the Secular Fraternity or the Augustinian Recollect Youth form part of this network…

As a challenge, I point out that I hope we know how to better tell what we do, share it to make it bigger. Houses have been built after earthquakes, migrants have been helped… and there is the Augustinian Recollect Family!

You have also participated in the Center for the Protection of Minors of the Church in Mexico.

CEPROME is an institution endorsed by the Holy See and by the Latin American Episcopate that tries to deepen the protection of the vulnerable. This experience has forced me to continue training. I took advantage of the summer courses at the Pontifical University of Mexico with the Diploma in Participatory Pastoral Planning, a foundation for later designing projects with their objectives, their phases, their evaluation.

CEPROME puts the victim at the center. Little can be done in the face of this monstrosity, as Pope Francis has pointed out, but I believe that the Augustinian Recollects have to maintain this level of concern, of awareness. Do you mean that a case will never happen? Unfortunately no. But we will avoid what is possible and we will know what to do if they occur.

For this we must be very grateful to the previous prior general of the Augustinian Recollects, Miguel Miró, who had the courage to make the first protocols and enriched us with an ecclesial vision on this painful and difficult issue of abuse in the Church.

Digital evangelization has been another of your endeavors.

Evangelization is a process that leads a person towards an encounter with Jesus. The digital experience has a mostly young audience, although not only, and so the task is to accompany, form and share the knowledge of Jesus in that digital world. Its forms and methods differ from institutional communication, where you promote your values or your identity.

We need creativity and audacity, as Pope Francis says, to laypeople and professionals, we need investment. I never considered that the resources for it are an expense, because in the end what we are playing for is our own public image. And as Benedict XVI said, the Internet and new technologies are the pulpit of the 21st century.

This virtual dialogue must be done with believers and those who are far away; and we will have to talk about emotions, feelings, to engage and lead the interlocutor towards Jesus. The themes of human and emotional development help, as Saint Augustine himself knew… It is not just about talking theoretically about Christ or showing classical religious art. A photo of an embrace between two religious can say more than a painting of Saint Alonso de Orozco. Sometimes an image and a simple caption are enough, simple and concrete language is enough.

What will be the motto and that of your episcopate? What projects do you dream of?

“I want mercy” is the motto. The shield will have three elements: the land where I was born and where my faith began… Another is Mexico, where I have learned to be consecrated and a priest; and the third element will be Augustinian. These are the three realities that have marked my life.

As bishop, I want to be a member of Cardinal Carlos Aguiar’s team, to be a brother to the auxiliary bishops, who with me will be six. I hope to facilitate this team work in such a large city with such varied environments and dimensions.

I am open to everything, but I have always liked working with lay people, who are the ones who have helped me to organize social tasks, to have the role of principal in a school, to serve in hospitals —where they have opened their doors to us thanks to the laity.

Listening is very important, because after the pandemic many people have been left wounded and alone. In Mexico City it was not as restricted as in other parts of the world, but people have been broken, wounded.

In addition, this sharing of life and mission with the laity is not only reminded by the Augustinian Recollects of the General and Provincial Chapters, the Pope himself in the general audience at the General Chapter reminded us that they will be the ones who safeguard the charism. It matters little if we are two, one or no Province: the important thing is to walk together. Hopefully we know how to explain this process of synodality and learn from each other.

You have been living in community for 35 years. What will your new life as a bishop be like now?

I am going to live in a community of auxiliary bishops, all together in the same building. In my case, therefore, it will not be like when some religious bishops have been sent to a distant place to live alone. Of course certain customs change. I am helped by the prayer and advice of others who have done this step before. It is complex, because you live in community, but in another environment and your Recollect brothers are there, but we are already different.

Mexico City has great challenges for a pastor.

We want to be close to the priests and close to the People of God. That is the biggest challenge: listening to the priests, to the people, to be there. Knowing what a kilo of tortilla costs, what difficulties people have: insecurity, housing, wages… Get soaked and listen. I will avoid living isolated, in my world: I want to be close.

How do you see the problem of drug trafficking and violence in particular?

This issue is very complex: it is not just about some people who distribute drugs and therefore have a lot of money. There is a whole network with protagonists and actors from all walks of life, including those who would have to ensure that this does not happen. There is a convulsed society, with attacks, with deaths, with threats. It is very complex.

I remember that the Pope wrote to the president of Cáritas Argentina in 2015 to be careful not to “Mexicanize” Argentina, which raised rivers of ink; but I think that Mexico is experiencing now what Colombia experienced in the 80s and 90s of the last century.

The episcopate tries to be with the people, with the people. Many priests are there consoling in the face of violence, administering sacraments. Achieving peace is very complex, we have already seen a multitude of processes in Latin America in which one step forward and three steps back were taken. I think the advice given by his former Holiness Nuncio in Mexico, Franco Coppola, was good: where there are dead, do not stop asking for peace at the funeral.

May we ask a greeting for the readers of AgustinosRecoletos.org?

I greet all those who have followed this interview and I ask for your prayers to do well in this new role and responsibility. We are still brothers and we are grateful to God for everything he gives us.

I believe that there is much to give to the Church from the areas where we find ourselves. We must not lose hope because every difficulty is an opportunity for growth.

As Pope Francis says, when he always asks for prayers for him, pray for a servant. We meet at each Eucharist.

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