The mayoress of Tumaco (Colombia) delivered the image that represents the Eucharistic miracle that took place in that Pacific coastal city, one of those documented by Blessed Carlo Acutis on his website dedicated to the Eucharist.
50 mayors from Latin America and Europe have participated in this Congress to promote and disseminate sustainable development from integral ecology, education and the shared experiences of young people from various communities.
The closing of the Congress took place at the Augustinianum Patristic Institute, where the mayoress delivered to the Pope, on behalf of the people of Tumaqueño, a small statuette representing the Augustinian Recollect Gerardo Larrondo (1875-1943) carrying the ciborium and the consecrated form with which, according to numerous testimonies, made the sea recede avoiding the destruction of the so-called Pearl of the Pacific on January 31, 1906.
This Recollect religious had as a community partner Blessed Julián Moreno (1871-1936), nephew of Saint Ezekiel Moreno and martyr in Motril (Granada, Spain). Saint Ezekiel Moreno was bishop of Pasto, a diocese to which Tumaco then belonged, and responsible for the arrival of the Recollects in that mission in the Colombian Pacific.
However, on that same day, the holy bishop was on the steamer Antonio López heading to Cádiz, with the aim of undergoing surgery in Madrid for the cancer he suffered from. He did not return to Colombia, since the progression and worsening of his disease prevented him from doing so to the point that he died in August.
The so-called miracle of the wave is one of those registered on the website created by Blessed Carlo Acutis (1991-2006) to promote the Eucharistic faith and which earned him the name patron of the Internet and of the “millennial” generation. .
One of the sacristans of what is now the Cathedral of San Andrés, grandson of an eyewitness to the event, still remembers how his grandfather recounted what happened that day:
My grandfather used to say that they had been to mass in the temple where the Cathedral was later built, and from the church to the outside everything was sea. There were two priests in the town and when the parishioners realize what is happening, they return to the parish priest, load the images on the litter and leave with them on their shoulders.
Apparently the waters had suddenly receded. For seafarers it was an unmistakable sign that a giant wave would come later. The faithful placed the images of the saints on a litter and went out, although the two religious Recollects tried to dissuade them because they thought that there was no reason to be frightened, unaware of the meaning of this sudden withdrawal from the sea.
But once they became aware of what was happening, they changed their attitude. Fray Gerardo hurriedly returned to the temple, hurriedly consumed the consecrated Hosts and reserved only one. Turning towards the people he said to them:
“Come on, my children, let’s all go to the beach and may God have mercy on us.”
The following account is from the Augustinian Recollect Pedro Corro:
“As if electrified by the presence of Jesus and by the imposing attitude of his minister, they all marched weeping and crying out to Her Divine Majesty to have mercy on them. The painting must certainly have been one of the most tender and moving that can be imagined, since Tumaco is a town of many thousands of inhabitants, all of whom were there, with all the terror of a tragic death already engraved in their features beforehand.
Witnesses claim that at the moment an enormous black wave was approaching, Fray Gerardo showed the Host in the direction of the sea. Fray Julián, next to him, realized that the sea had stopped and began to shout: “Miracle!” The waters reached their waists, without touching the Host, and they began to recede. Brother Pedro Corro adds:
“As if impelled by an invisible power superior to all power of Nature, that wave had been contained instantly, and the enormous mountain of water, which threatened to erase the town of Tumaco from the face of the earth, began its backward movement to disappear, out to sea, returning to recover its ordinary level and natural balance”.
Gerardo Larrondo left other traces in the years of his mission in Tumaco. Thus, he founded his first female college (1909) and notably improved the Salahonda canal, which facilitated navigation through those rivers.
Fray Gerardo Larrondo de San José was born on March 27, 1875 in Vitoria (Álava). He professed in the Order on March 28, 1891 and after his preparation as a religious and priest he was sent on mission to the Philippines.
In August 1898, because of the Revolution, he was assigned to South America, leaving Manila for Panama and, later, to Venezuela. Given Bishop Ezekiel Moreno’s requests to the Augustinian Recollects to send him missionaries, he was assigned the Parish of San Andrés of Tumaco.
Larrondo was always concerned with the formation of young people. Thus, he was one of the first Recollect teachers in an external college, the one that existed in Bacolod (Philippines) from July 1896 to September 30, 1898. This failed attempt due to major causes served greatly for the subsequent entry of the Recollection. in the educational apostolate.
Later and already as prior general (1926-1932), Larrondo asked the provincial priors to send young religious to Rome to pursue higher studies and thus, once trained, the Recollection would have its own teachers. He passed away in São Paulo, Brazil, on January 19, 1943.
Since his performance in 1906, in Tumaco every January the 40 hours of Eucharistic Adoration are celebrated in the Cathedral of San Andrés. Nelly Castillo, from Tumaco, considers that despite so many hardships, they are a people blessed by God:
“We are far from the capital of the country, we are marginalized for being Afro-descendants, there are not enough sources of work, we have experienced violence associated with illicit crops, but even so we are blessed by God with priests who have cultivated the faith and with miracles like that of the January 31, 1906”.
She, proud of the faith and traditions of the Colombian Pacific, has also participated since she was a child in the three days of Adoration to the Blessed Sacrament that end with a great procession that passes precisely along the beach where Fray Gerardo faced the raging sea with the Eucharist.
