SÃO PAULO, Brazil – A Vatican announcement on Feb. 25 that Blessed José Gregório Hernández will be canonized was received in South America – especially in his home country Venezuela – with unprecedented joy.
Not only will the pioneering physician and lay Catholic be the first Venezuelan-born saint, but it will also be the officialization of a devotion that has deep social roots in Venezuelan society.
“He always had a fame of sainthood and, as soon as he died [in 1919], the devotion to him began. Only 20 years later, it was already normal that at least one boy in each family would be named José Gregório,” sociologist and theologian Enrique Ali González, a professor at the Central University of Venezuela, told Crux.
Over the decades, he would become the major intercessor for people praying for health and would become an informal patron saint of medicine in Venezuela and some neighboring countries, especially Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador.
As a major folk saint, his cultural significance largely surpassed the Catholic zone of influence, and José Gregório was adopted by Spiritualists and Santería adherents as an important religious entity as well.
José Gregório was born in 1864 in Isnotú, a town located in the Andean state of Trujillo. Since his childhood he excelled in studies, something that led a teacher to suggest to his father that José Gregório should be sent to Caracas to continue his education. In 1882, he completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy and got into the Central University of Venezuela in order to study Medicine.
He graduated in 1888 and decided to work as a general practitioner in his hometown, remembering his mother’s words concerning the difficulties of the local inhabitants to find treatment for their diseases. One year later, however, he was recommended to the Venezuelan president by a professor and was sent to Paris to study experimental disciplines that could help him to modernize Venezuelan medicine.
“He was admired by the best doctors in Paris. They usually told people that he was the best student they ever had,” Spanish-born Father Francisco Javier Duplá, an expert in education who authored a book about José Gregório, told Crux.
When he came back to Caracas, he brought with him a number of instruments and equipment to update the techniques in Venezuelan medicine. Among them was a microscope, which he ended up being the first scientist to introduce in Venezuela.
“As a University professor in Caracas, he was the founder of the histology course, among others,” Duplá said.
Combining his teaching career and his practice as a doctor, José Gregório little by little built his fame as a rigorous scientist, a renovator of Venezuelan medicine, and a saint.
“He didn’t stipulate a price to charge for his appointments. He kept a glass jar on his table. Rich people could give the amount they want, and the poor shouldn’t pay – in fact, he would give them money from the jar, so they could buy medicines,” González explained. Everyday, his jar would be filled with money only to be emptied again.
It was also common for José Gregório to visit patients who were impeded to get to his office due to their illness – especially the poor. All those actions impressed his colleagues and patients.
“His intelligence was also impressive. He was a Renaissance man, who spoke seven languages, wrote a Philosophy book that is still studied, and played several instruments,” González said.
José Gregório was always a layman, but he tried to become a member of a religious order or a priest on two occasions. In 1908, he temporarily left the university and joined a Cartushian monastery.
“He spent a few months in Lucca, Italy, but had to leave the order due to health problems. When he came back to Caracas, his weight corresponded to only 97 pounds,” Duplá said.
In 1912, he traveled to Rome with the plan of joining a seminary. A lung infection, however, led him to give up his dream again and go back to Venezuela.
Since 1899, he was a member of the Franciscan secular order.
“The fact that he was a layman is very significant. Many people think that in order to be a saint one has to be a priest, but that’s not true,” Duplá said.
In the opinion of Enrique González, José Gregório’s laity is especially important now that Pope Francis has been emphasizing the relevance of lay Catholics for the Church.
“And he proposes to us a model of laity that is very valuable. It’s at the same time a universal way of being a lay Catholic and the specific way of a lay scientist towards sainthood,” he added.
José Gregório died at 54, hit by a car in Caracas as he was going to visit a patient. According to Duplá, the people of the city followed the procession with his coffin for several miles.
“They wanted to take him on a chariot, but the people ended up grabbing his coffin and carrying it till his grave,” he explained.
Unofficially, José Grigório has been a patron saint for physicians and persons with health issues for decades. In 1972, the Holy See recognized him as a servant of God and in 1986 as venerable. In 2020, the Pope approved a miracle that happened with his intercession, the recovery of a girl who was shot in the head.
Like that miracle, there are innumerable cases of people who think that José Gregório healed them or a close relative.
That was the case of Milagros Potentini, a resident of Margarita Island, and her son Diomedes Rafael. In 2016, when he was 20, Diomedes began to feel stomach ache with a certain frequency. He did a few tests and a lesion was found in his stomach.
“We then traveled to Caracas and he underwent new tests. The doctors discovered that he had a large cancerous tumor. As soon as I heard that, my brain was disconnected from my concrete reality and I only prayed to José Gregório, supplicating that there was no cancer,” Potentini recalled.
In February of 2017, Diomedes was finally taken to surgery. Pontentini had put a small stamp of José Gregory in her son’s clothes and prayed for him without interruption.
“After two or three hours, the physicians called me to go up to the operation room. When I got there, they told me: ‘We opened and closed your son. There was no tumor, nothing,” she recalled.
Potentini still can’t hold her tears nowadays when she recalls that time. She was so thankful to José Gregório that she gathered all documents regarding her son’s case and sent them to the Holy See. Unfortunately, the case was not accepted by the Vatican authorities as part of the process for José Gregório’s beatification.
“I don’t have any doubt that it was a miracle. All the evidence is here. He is a miraculous saint who was with us the entire time,” she said.
Diomedes Rafael, who is 28 now, became an extraordinarily pious man.
“I’m sure many more people have stories like that with José Gregório,” Potentini added.
Great masses are expected to join the ceremonies of canonization, which have not been scheduled yet.
According to González, President Nicolas Maduro’s policy has been one of respecting the popular devotion to José Gregório.
“In his beatification, authorities took part in the events and remained discreet. I feel there’s some kind of sensitivity in the regime when it comes to José Gregório,” he said, adding that “they know he’s much bigger than them.”
