Luis Aguirre, a tireless missionary and fighter against the injustices of chinese communism (1/2)

Arrival at the Kweiteh mission

He arrived at Kweiteh on March 8, 1940, and served as parish priest in various missionary posts in the Diocese until October 1951.

When he arrived at the mission, he devoted himself to the study of the Chinese language under the tutelage of Father Mariano Alegría. After that, he was sent to the Yucheng mission with Father Venancio Martínez to continue his language training there and delve into the pastoral work of the mission under Venancio’s guidance. He was there from November 1940 to January 1942.

Friendship with Father Venancio

With an ardent spirit, determined and without half measures, Father Aguirre immediately connected and established a deep friendship with Father Venancio, who would mark his life and always carry in his heart as an outstanding example of religious and pastoral holiness. Luis Aguirre, who lived with him for a year and a half in the mission, testifies to it thus:

Father Venancio, both on his trips and visits to Christian communities, as well as in the time he spent at home, lived a life of prayer and chapel. […] He was a man of intense prayer. Every day, before dawn and before getting up, he was already in the chapel; during the day, he visited the Blessed Sacrament several times; in the afternoon, he went to the prayers of the Christians; and at night, he would stay in the chapel, keeping the Lord company for a long time. Many nights I did not feel his return home because I had already fallen asleep.

After a long year with Father Venancio, he was assigned to Kweiteh, and from October 1943 to November 1944, he pastored the Christian community of Kuotsuentsi.

At that time, Father Aguirre experienced in Kweiteh the holy death of his dear brother and friend, Father Venancio, who a year earlier had offered himself as a victim to Merciful Love following the example of Saint Therese.

While at the Central House to recover his strength and after having had his teeth done, Father Venancio fell seriously ill, and on July 20, 1944, feeling increasingly worse, he called his confessor. After confessing, he asked for Viaticum and Extreme Unction. Father Luis Aguirre, his companion and friend, tells us how he lived through those moments:

What moving moments when the priest showing him the Holy Host, he took the floor, and with a trembling and broken voice, he addressed Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, asking forgiveness for his infidelities, defects, and sins…! And afterward, addressing the Community, he asked us for forgiveness for the lack of charity, bad examples, and offenses… Oh! How fervent, how holy Father Venancio is!

After receiving the sacraments with great fervor, he called Aguirre, who was his  almost countryman, a school and Mission companion and close friend, and made him sit on his bed and taking his right hand in his, he confided to him his last thoughts and wishes, entrusting him with the mission of being with him in his previous moments, representing his absent parents and brothers, and entrusting him with his last thoughts and words of comfort for them:

I will soon die, but I die happy because it is the will of God, and I am also fully convinced that I am going to Heaven, not because of my merits because I am a great sinner, but because of the mercy of God and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. You know that in Mélida -Navarra- I have my parents and brothers. I do not know if they are still alive. If they are alive when you can communicate with them, write to them and tell them that their son Venancio has gone to Heaven; Tell them that I have always loved them very much, but that now, in the last moments of my life, I love them even more, if possible, and that I think only of God and them; tell them not to cry and to console themselves with the thought that I am in Heaven, from where I will watch over them; and tell them also that I await them all in Heaven. Since my parents and my brothers cannot be with me, you must take their place, being at my side, as they would be, in my last moments and accompanying me to the grave. Then tell them all the details of my death.

Father Aguirre, seeing his friend Brother Venancio tired from the effort he had made in this conversation, asked him, moved, to rest and remained there beside his bed, watching over him for a long time… He tells us how the last days of his life were:

He spent the whole night kissing the Crucifix and a picture of the Virgin, invoking the names of Jesus and Mary and making fervent acts of faith, hope, and charity. Once, I told him to try to rest and get some sleep. “No,” he answered; “I can’t, Luis. I must not sleep. I must take advantage of the little time left to love Jesus because I have loved him very little.” The next three days that is, the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, he continued, despite the medicines, with a fever that burned him. His fervor was also increasing: for him, there was no one but Jesus and Mary.

On Monday the 24th, when Father Luis Aguirre returned from the mission of Kwotuentsi, where he had celebrated Sunday Mass, he went to see his friend. The latter was already very ill, but he could recognize him. Seeing that he was sweaty and moved by great fraternal love, he said, “Go and change Luis, or you will get sick.” These were his last words. He spent the whole day delirious. Towards eight o’clock in the evening, he lost his speech. Seeing that his last moment was approaching, the entire Community gathered in his room and prayed the recommendation of the soul and other prayers of the Ritual. Finally, at ten twenty at night on the 24th of July 1944, consumed by fever, but placidly, without movements or convulsions, he gave up his soul to God.

On the afternoon of the 25th, the body was taken to the friars’ property at the mission at Kweiteh station, where it was buried. The burial was well attended and solemn. Religious men and women, seminarians, the girls from the Holy Childhood, and a large group of Christians from Kweiteh and the station accompanied the coffin with emotion. At that time, the mission was cut off from the outside world due to the consequences of the Second World War, so Father Aguirre could not fulfill his promise to his friend Venancio to inform his parents and family of his death and his last words until 1946. This is how he began his letter to them:

Dear friends: For two years now, I have been under a grave obligation to write to you, giving you an account of the last thoughts of your saintly son and my dear friend and brother, Father Venancio. He recommended this to me, and I promised him it a few days before his death. I have not fulfilled this obligation before because it was impossible since the war disrupted all communications, leaving us wholly cut off from the world. Today, when I am already in the position of having this letter reach your hands, my conscience urges me to fulfill Father Venancio’s request. But, believe me, when I take up the pen to tell you how Father Venancio died, my whole being is still moved. As a military chaplain in our Spanish Civil War and a missionary in China, I have witnessed incredibly moving deaths. Still, none has affected me as much and made me shed as many tears as the death of the good Venancio. His death was like his life, and he was an active missionary. He was selfless and highly zealous. He was a model of missionaries! Fortunately, I, who lived with him in Yucheng for more than a year and witnessed his life, can assure you that whatever is said about Father Venancio is not enough.

Finally, his friend Luis Aguirre collected most of the personal information not directly related to Venancio’s activity. From his harvest, he provided the testimony of their coexistence in the Mission, the great friendship and brotherhood that united them, and, finally, the story of his last illness and his death. These testimonies had been requested by Father Miguel Muñoz, a fellow student and friend of Venancio and, at that time, director of the magazine “Todos Misioneros.”

(All MIssionaries). His idea was to put all these materials in Father Victorino Capánaga’s hands so he could prepare a profile, a project that was never carried out. Years later, when the 50th anniversary of Venancio’s priestly ordination was celebrated, Father Aguirre dusted off the notes from yesteryear. So that they would not be lost in oblivion, he published them in the Bulletin of the Province of Saint Nicholas in 1984.