Testimony of Cardinal Baltazar Porras
President of the Catholic Action Foundation Pius XI School of Holiness
Archbishop of the diocese of Caracas

The beatification of Cardinal Eduardo Pironio is an important event for Argentina, for Latin America and for the universal Church, since he is one of the pioneers of Latin American theology, of the General Conference of Medellin, then at the head of Celam and therefore very close collaborator of Pope Paul VI and John Paul II until his last moment. I would like to underline his profound spirituality, a man with a sense of love for Jesus, for the Church, with an impressive serenity, always showing that his mission was to serve and serve others with great delicacy. His writings are part of the legacy he leaves us, it is full, especially in this time of Advent, of the sense of hope, of embodying ourselves in the always painful and difficult reality in which we human beings live, but in which the calm that gives faith leads us to cross this stormy sea that is always present in existence and which sometimes wants to take us away from the Lord.

The love for the Madonna accompanied him throughout his life. And in his last illness, in his last moments, I remember hearing him say that when he died he would want his remains to rest here, at the feet of the Virgin of Luján, which had a great meaning for him for his life as a priest and as a bishop, and for his devotion to the little Virgin, who had done so many miracles for him, and above all the miracle of his permanence and fidelity to the Church. It is a very great gift that Pope Francis is giving us in these days with the beatification that is being prepared here in Luján, at which I thank God for being able to be present, since I have received a lot of advice from him and I have received from him this feel deep.