Pedro Poveda: Gentle Challenge

By Marisa Rodríguez Abancéns

This is a strong and lively biography, for general public. It narrates the life of an admirable and controversial man of the Church. It depicts an attractive and coherent life of a saint of today, an exceptional man who has a lot to say to our society.
The book will interest everyone: believers or agnostics, young or old, intellectuals or ordinary people, because it is the life of a witness who lived intensely and with all its consequences, the early 20th century of life in Spain. It is the story of a man who made his Christian faith the reason for his existence, and as a consequence gave his life for it and suffered martyrdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Narcea Ediciones
• Release date: Oct 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9788427723542

Book preview

1

Introduction

Telling the story of a great man

To dare was a word that meant a lot to Pedro Poveda. And it could easily be said that this book itself is a piece of daring, aiming as it does to recount a very fruitful life in relatively few pages. There are valuable biographies of this man beside which the present volume seems very short. But that was precisely my aim: to tell the story of a great man in a short format. And to do so without losing intensity, value or interest in the process. Whether this is actually achieved, the reader may judge for him or herself.

A great deal of respect is needed when you approach someone’s life. It is a little like leaning out over a balcony to see the ocean and only being able to take in a single eyeful. Every life eludes the grasp of anyone contemplating it and if the aim is to make that life known to others, things get even more complicated. However that is my aim in this book and to achieve it I have slowly gone over a human journey from beginning to end. I have stopped at every known corner of the path which was the existence of Pedro Poveda and have paused at some of his writings.

You can get to know human beings from what they say when their life bears out their words, as is the case with our protagonist. Few things help us identify with another more than reading what they have written.

There are stories whose force and vitality are contagious, so that we almost unconsciously appropriate their gestures and way of looking at things. My hope is that something similar will happen to the reader of these pages, since I am convinced that this saint of today, this good man who has much to say to contemporary society, can exert a worthwhile influence.

This book is addressed to the general public to lead them along the path that was Pedro Poveda’s life as a priest, humanist, educationalist and founder of the Teresian Association.

The life recounted here is also that of a witness who lived with intensity the first third of the 20th century in Spain, with all its consequences. It is the story of a man who took risks and made of the Christian faith his reason for living, a faith for which he gave his life and suffered martyrdom.

Poveda’s story can be of interest to everyone, believers or otherwise, young or old, intellectuals or ordinary people, because it is a true story. In the following pages all that seems true is true. It happened and I recount it as such.

Finally I must thank all the people who have supported me in writing this book, since it was their enthusiasm and trust in me which made it possible.

And my thanks, above all, go to Pedro Poveda himself, who has taught us the Christian dream afresh.

Pedro Poveda (1874–1936)

2

May I do as You want me to do.

Great hopes, strong convictions, intense love

That night of July 1936 was unlike any other. It stood alone, unique, the night of a few last fateful words. As the door closed of Number 7, Alameda St., Madrid, the words of St Paul …until Christ be formed in you, were fulfilled. Something Pedro Poveda had always wanted was happening. Lord, may I think as You want me to think, may I love as You want me to love, may I speak as You wish me to speak. This is my one desire. Many times he would repeat this prayer, simple, transparent and so daring it might even seem presumptuous, were it not for the humility of the one praying it. The whole life of this priest was fraught with the daring and risk that come with great love affairs.

That night his life lit up with a great light. He had also insistently made a further request, spurred on by another of his passions: I ask God for the grace not to live a single day without celebrating Holy Mass. History attests that this man, who had held his priestly identity above all else, did indeed celebrate Mass up to his very last day. That is to say, up to that final morning of 27th July 1936 when his life was taken from him in exchange for a few final words: I am a priest of Jesus Christ.

There are no written documents to prove whether his first petition to do as God wished him to do was fulfilled. In the end only God knows to what extent a person has responded to His plan. Only God. Yet nonetheless how could those around him not vouch for it, – those people who knew him in life and shared in his spirit, – the spirit of someone who tirelessly sought the will of the Father? The Church knows it, recognising in him an example of holiness. His deeds affirm it, because, to use his own words, they witness to what we are.

Pedro Poveda was a man of both thought and action. Begin by doing was his advice. He lived in a secularised society which he wished to transform in accordance with the values of the Gospel, that is, to make it more just, more human and more Godly. And into this he poured all his energy. Difficulties and they were many, did not paralyse him. He began each phase of his life with his spirits and hope intact.

To remember this priest is to recall a story of faithfulness, a free and creative faithfulness, stretching over his life like a long word, expressing its ultimate meaning.

Did Pedro Poveda do as God wished him to? Everything would seem to affirm that he did. The reader may decide for him or herself through these pages that narrate his life. It was a life lived in response to a call, a journey in which his identity took on five unmistakable features: he believed in the value of all that is human and became a priest; he was pained at the poverty he saw and ranged himself alongside the poor; he believed in education’s power to transform people and opened schools and cultural centres; he was convinced of the importance of lay Christians in the Church and founded the Teresian Association; he was so passionate about his faith that he gave his life for it.

This is a story of great hopes, strong convictions and intense love.

Begin by doing was his advice.

3

Deep faith

Believing in the value of what is little

Pedro Poveda was a humble man who struggled for the cause of God and God made him into a witness to hope, in a plural and controversial world. His message may be summed up in a few words: to live faith as deeply as breathing; to live life discovering God’s footsteps in the everyday; to seek that interface where faith and life meet passionately; to strive to make society recognise and respect the dignity of each person. Then love, peace, justice and everything, just about everything, could be reborn.

That is why Poveda’s thought is best understood from within real situations: being present, seeking responses, putting question marks over the existing state of things; giving, giving of oneself without measure. To talk of Pedro Poveda is to evoke the salt of the earth: simple, generous and out of all proportion to its effect. It is to believe that an ideal state of society is achievable, because love changes life and people disposed to love are able to create another kind of world. It is to believe in respecting difference, in dialogue and the power of co-operation. But above all it is to believe in the value of what is little, in the richness of giving and in the courage to begin all over again.

To believe, always believe. And to name that faith out loud. Because, he tells us, You cannot believe with all your heart and remain silent. Pedro Poveda’s faith was the compass of his life. His commitment to humanity sprang from it. As did his life’s destiny. You die as you have lived. He lived out in the open and gave his life – The disciple is not greater than the master – for his deepest conviction: faith must shout aloud in the market-place and show that God journeys with His people.

4

When and where did it all begin?

Destined to be sown like a grain of wheat

Pedro Poveda lived to be sixty-one, from 1874 to 1936, between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. As can happen around the turn of a century, opposing interpretations of the notion of the human person, the meaning of the world and human history arose. In Spain this period lasted from the Restoration of the Monarchy¹ to the Second Republic² and up to the Civil War of 1936, something Poveda only barely had time to experience.

In those years, too, World War One was to break out with all its political and social fall out. It would still take a few decades for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be proclaimed and social inequalities were striking. Education was going through a critical phase, while the world of knowledge and scientific development set itself in opposition to faith as two irreconcilable opposites.

Geographically speaking, Poveda’s life centred on five places: Linares, his native town in the province of Jaén; Guadix in Granada, where he began his work of preaching the Gospel and setting up schools; Covadonga in Asturias, where he conceived and set in motion his project of the Teresian Association; the city of Jaén, where he both organised the Association and engaged deeply with the local situation; finally Madrid, where he lived the years of his full maturity, of complete coherence with his faith, witnessing and giving his life in martyrdom. Five phases of a life that fill just a few lines! – sixty-one and a half years, rich and full, stretching all the way to today. For some people do not die. They live on in history through others who share those same passions and those same tasks.

A child bringing joy

It all began on 3rd December 1874. It was the day that Pedro Poveda was born in Linares, an Andalusian town of shiny olive trees and deep mines that seemed to plunge in search of the soul of the landscape. Such would be the faith of Pedro, baptised in the Church of this people: a faith tough and strong, that pushes out boundaries and breaks frontiers. He was destined to be sown like a grain of wheat, like yeast or leaven in dough. But first he was simply a child, bringing joy to his family.

From his house at No. 3 Bermejal Square the sirens of factories could be heard, along with the screech of trams bound for the mines. Linares was a busy industrial town, whose