FERNANDO RIELO
FOUNDER OF THE INSTITUTE ID OF CHRIST THE REDEEMER
General Remarks |
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FERNANDO RIELO FOUNDER OF THE INSTITUTE ID OF CHRIST THE REDEEMER |
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He was born in Madrid on August 28, 1923 into a very religious family.
He spent his
childhood surrounded by
the affection of his parents and under the impression of being protected
by our Heavenly Father, whose constant, close presence governed his
whole life and marked the spirituality of his sons and daughters. The Spanish Civil War jolted him directly from a happy childhood to a youth filled with suffering. He studied in Madrid at the Royal Institute of St. Isidore and at the Cardinal Cisneros Institute.  At the age of
sixteen, at
Valsaín
(Guadarrama Mountain Range, Segovia, Spain), an intimate experience
marked him forever. It was the call of our Heavenly Father: “Be holy, my
son, as I am holy.” He himself stated, “And I promised Him that I would
always repent of whatever displeased Him and would spend my whole
existence seeking his will..., and I began to wish ardently that these
words of the Father would enter into the hearts of all men.” Fernando Rielo’s intense spirituality at first was concretely expressed at the age of twenty-two in his entering the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, the Redemptorists, with whom he completed his studies in philosophy and theology. But Providence had other plans for his life, and, after remaining in that Congregation for a time, he left it in 1954 and went back to the world of work while waiting for new signs of the divine will. He was sent to Santa Cruz de Tenerife as a civil servant. While coming down from the island’s airport along the old highway, as he himself relates, Christ showed him the way: “This is the place I have chosen for the foundation of the Institute; this city will be your cross and your glory.” There the Institution of men and women Idente Missionaries arose in 1959, enthusiastically received by the Bishop of the Diocese, the Most Rev. Domingo Pérez Cáceres. On January 23, 1994 it was recognized as a Public Association of the Faithful, and on October 22, 2004 it was raised to the status of an Institute of Consecrated Life. The religious foundation was followed by others of a cultural and humanitarian nature, with the sole purpose of seeking every possible way to take the Gospel to everyone. In 1988, for health reasons, he moved to New York, the city where he offered his life amid numerous forms of suffering until his death on December 6, 2004, remaining as a beacon for all Idente Missionaries and everyone who knew him. |
 The breakwater in the port may be said to have been my first residence, my first dwelling in the Institute Fernando Rielo |
