St. José Gabriel Brochero, the Gaucho Priest of Argentina

Who was St. José Gabriel Brochero?

St. José Gabriel Brochero was a country priest from Córdoba, Argentina, who spent more than forty years in the mountains west of the city, riding his mule from ranch to ranch so that no one would die without the sacraments. Argentines call him simply Cura Brochero, Father Brochero, and he was so much one of the people he served that he is also remembered as the "Gaucho Priest." He was born on March 16, 1840, and died, blind and sick with leprosy, on January 26, 1914. Pope Francis canonized him on October 16, 2016, and we keep his feast on March 16.

Seminarian and young priest

He was born near Santa Rosa de Río Primero, in the north of Córdoba province, the fourth of ten children of a farming family with a deep Christian life; two of his sisters became nuns. He entered the seminary of Our Lady of Loreto in Córdoba on March 5, 1856, and was ordained a priest on November 4, 1866.

As a young priest at the cathedral he worked through a cholera epidemic that struck the city. His friend Ramón J. Cárcano remembered that "se le veía correr de enfermo en enfermo," you could see him running from one sick person to the next. He also served as prefect of studies at the seminary and earned a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Córdoba.

The parish beyond the mountains

At the end of 1869 he was sent to the parish of San Alberto, west of the Sierras Grandes, mountains over 2,000 meters high. It covered 4,336 square kilometers, with a little over ten thousand people scattered without roads or schools, cut off from the city, and very poor.

He did not stay in the church. He took the Mass kit in the saddlebags of his mule and went out in rain and cold to reach the sick, saying, "Ya el diablo me va a robar un alma," the devil is about to steal a soul from me. He preached in the plain speech of his people so they could understand. He used to say that they were "abandonados de todos pero no por Dios," abandoned by everyone, but not by God.

The Spiritual Exercises

He believed the retreat of St. Ignatius could change a person's life. The year after he arrived, he began leading his parishioners to Córdoba to make the Spiritual Exercises: two hundred kilometers, three days on muleback over the mountains, in caravans that often numbered more than five hundred people. More than once they were caught in snowstorms. After nine days of silence, prayer and penance, they came home changed.

In 1875, with the help of his parishioners, he began building a house for the Exercises in Villa del Tránsito itself. It opened in 1877, sometimes with more than seven hundred people in a single retreat, and over forty thousand people made the Exercises there during his years as pastor. He added a house for the sisters, a school for girls and a residence for priests.

Roads, water and a railroad

He was convinced that faith and the welfare of his people went together. With his parishioners he built more than two hundred kilometers of roads, including the route over the Altas Cumbres, and several churches. He brought water to the town with an aqueduct from the Panaholma River. He asked the authorities for mail coaches, post offices and telegraph stations, and won them. He even planned a railroad branch through the Traslasierra Valley, from Villa Dolores to Soto, to lift his mountain people out of poverty.

Leprosy, blindness and death

Days after he died, the Catholic newspaper of Córdoba wrote that he had caught the illness that took his life by visiting at length, and even embracing, an abandoned leper. Because of the disease he gave up his parish and lived for a few years with his sisters in his home town. His old parishioners begged him to come back, and he returned to his house in Villa del Tránsito, where he died, blind and deaf, on January 26, 1914. His last words are remembered as "Ahora tengo ya los aparejos listos pa'l viaje": now I have my gear ready for the journey. In 1916 the town took his name, Villa Cura Brochero.

The miracles of St. José Gabriel Brochero

His cause was opened in 1967, and St. John Paul II declared him Venerable in February 2004.

• Approved: on December 20, 2012, Benedict XVI approved as a miracle the recovery of a child who, after a serious road accident, had been given a prognosis of a vegetative life with grave neurological damage, and who recovered with no medical explanation. Brochero was beatified at Villa Cura Brochero on September 14, 2013, at a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Angelo Amato.
• Approved: on January 22, 2016, Pope Francis approved a second miracle: the healing of a nine-year-old girl who came out of a coma after forty-five days. It opened the way to his canonization in Rome that October.

Symbols of St. José Gabriel Brochero in art

Because he lived in the age of photography, his images follow the old photographs. Look for:

• A hat and poncho: the dress of the country people of Córdoba, which he wore on his rounds.
• A mule: his companion on the mountain trails, and the most familiar sign of him.
• A cassock and crucifix: the priest underneath the poncho.
• A rugged older face: many images show him late in life, marked by his illness.

Feast day and prayer

We keep his feast on March 16, the day he was born. Pilgrims go to Villa Cura Brochero, in the Traslasierra Valley west of Córdoba, to pray at his tomb and visit the house where he died. See the feast day calendar for other saints of March.

We know of no single traditional prayer to him that we could confirm, so we do not print one. Let us ask St. José Gabriel Brochero, who never let a soul go without the sacraments, to pray for parish priests, for people in remote places, and for all who suffer from diseases that drive others away. Santo Cura Brochero, pray for us.