Who was Juan?
Juan was born on January 19, 1917 in Temperley, Lomas de Zamora district, Buenos Aires province. His parents were José Vázquez Rodríguez and Fernández Álvarez, natives of Galicia.
His mother offered him to the Blessed Virgin of Luján before he was born, instilling in him a fervent devotion to the Blessed Virgin, a promise he always kept with fervor.
He studied at Manuel Belgrano School and Euskal Echea Institute, where he graduated with excellent grades. He always won first prize for his grades and dedication to study. He completed his tertiary studies at the National University of Buenos Aires, obtaining the title of Surveyor Engineer.
He belonged to the Archdiocese of La Plata, until the Diocese of Lomas de Zamora was established. In 1932, when the ACA was born in our country, he was called by his parish priest to form, together with other boys, the JAC center of. the Parish of Nuestra Señora de Parish, the Pietà of Temperley, of which he would later be president for several years. He performed there until 1942.
After passing through the Archdiocesan Council of La Plata, he was called to collaborate in the Superior Council, where he was successively Secretary General, Vice President and finally National President in 1952. Since he was called to collaborate in the Superior Council of Youth of the AC, he was successively secretary, vice president and national president, until becoming vice president of the Central Council of the ACA.
In 1946 he traveled to Europe as a member of the JAC delegation to the Pax Romana Congress.
At the General Assembly of the International Federation of Catholic Youth in 1951 held in Rome, and in which Vázquez participated as an Argentine delegate, he was elected Vice-President. In this position he was re-elected at the General Assembly of 1954 and in 1956 he was appointed President.
This old fighter whose figure is almost confused with the history of the JAC; of its best and worst times, of its storms and its triumphs, of its successes and its falls, offers today to the movement that was the scene of his activity since childhood, the opportunity to present itself to the world claiming a vanguard position, which will be that of the JAC Argentina, every time the mouth of our National President speaks.
This is what his friends and colleagues of the time wrote about him in the aforementioned magazine which was a permanent channel of communication for the young people of Catholic Action.
The FIJC brought together 16 million young people from 41 participating countries. Having, in those years, consultative status with UNESCO. Its previous presidents were Joseph Senn (president of the Swiss Catholic Youth) and Henrich Koepler (president of the German Catholic Youth).
In 1951, Vázquez was placed in charge of the Ibero-American Commission of the IFJC based in Buenos Aires, a position he held for two terms. This commission held several regional meetings: Buenos Aires (August 1952); La Floresta (February 1953); Lima (October 1953); and Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo (July 1955 and October 1956, respectively).
It was then that he introduced the Cursillos of Christianity in Argentina, holding the first Cursillo from May 24 to 27, 1956 and creating two regional Secretariats with headquarters in Buenos Aires and Mexico.
As a complete layman, these responsibilities did not distract him from his professional field where he developed as a teacher of mathematics, commodity science, physics, religion and morality in secondary schools in our country. In 1930 he entered the Railways Management as an official at various levels, eventually holding hierarchical management positions.
He was a lecturer at the Temperley Business School, of which he was one of the founders, at the “Vicente Pallotti” Institute and at the “Antonio Saénz” Tertiary Teacher Training Institute.
An official of the National Ministry of Transport, he was dismissed in December 1954 by the Perón government and was reinstated in December 1955.
Since its foundation he was a professor at the Catholic University of Argentina, teaching, among other subjects, Social Doctrine of the Church, Ethics and Professional Morality, and Theology. Before the Catholic University, he was a professor at the Institute of Catholic Culture in Buenos Aires.
From 1958 to 1967 he was a permanent member of the Central Council of the ACA by appointment of the episcopate.
Pope Paul VI designated him as one of the first lay people to participate as auditors at the Second Vatican Council, in 1963/1964 and in 1965, until its closure.
On November 10, 1964, before the Second Vatican Council in its third session, John expressed:
We lay listeners are sincerely grateful to be invited once again to speak our words today. Because, by intervening on the scheme of the lay Apostolate, we express our keen interest in this other one: that of the Church in the modern world… But it is not enough to look, we must specify… The history of the Apostolate the scheme is brief… We are deeply aware that the Hierarchy needs to know, day after day, the world and its future. We feel deeply our mission, which in the language of the Holy Father Paul VI has acquired the definition of BRIDGE. Because we repeat: we are Church, we are world.
“We want to observe, speak and act for the Church and the world”
He was the only layman to speak in the public sessions of that great episcopal assembly.
In 1967 the Holy See distinguished him again, appointing him a member of the CONCILIUM of the laity for a five-year term.
From 1969 to 1970 and from 1970 to 1973 he was Director of Caritas Argentina, creating the Youth Department.
From layman to priest
In 1973 he expressed to his Bishop his desire to consecrate himself to the priesthood. He was 56 years old, on December 26, 1974 he was ordained deacon and on June 29, 1975 he was ordained priest in St. Peter's Square in Rome, at the age of 58.
Returning to his country, he joined his diocese of Lomas de Zamora and dedicated himself to priestly service in Youth Ministry and at the Catholic University of Argentina, where he had collaborated since 1958. He was chaplain of the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the said University.
During this period he established a great priestly friendship with many young people, his true passion. For each of them he was a priest, counselor, older brother and friend.
In 1976, a cerebral vascular lesion left him limited in many activities, but not in his dedication and service, in his lucidity and in his indomitable love for Catholic Action, which he continued to accompany, formally or informally, whenever he was asked.
Some memories of himself A simple man, calm in walking and speaking, but passionate and strong in his convictions. Demanding, but understanding. His center and his preaching were neither more nor less than “Friendship with Christ” and four watchwords that he impressed on us who knew him: austerity, authenticity, cleansing of the soul and heart, fidelity. We often hear it said:
“Among the young people of JAC there is no room for mediocre people and if there were, either they stop being mediocre or they stop being part of Catholic Action”
Monsignor Manuel Menéndez, who was bishop of San Martín, said with affection and emotion:
I remember that on Tuesday, November 10, 1964, a historic date for Argentine Catholics, Juan Vázquez, in the presence of 2.119 Council Fathers, for more than twelve minutes, spoke of the Ecumenical Assembly, of one of the most important themes of the Council: the presence of the Church in the world. His voice, slow, a little muffled, but clear and firm, had sounds that reached the soul and overwhelmed it with emotion. The applause with which the Council Fathers rewarded Juan Vázquez's dissertation seemed to me like agile doves flying toward the beloved Argentine Homeland to alight on the precious banner of the blessed Argentine Catholic Action.
The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal J. Villot, in his letter to Vázquez dated June 19, 1972, stated “……. “The Holy Father has entrusted me with the task of expressing gratitude to you for the work carried out and for the seriousness with which you have participated in a work that, in these five years, has already meant a great service to the Church…”
" For the Holy See, it is a source of hope to have the certainty that you will put this breadth of spirit and heart at the service of all, wherever you continue to work. ".
In 1999 Florencio José Arnaudo, in response to a request for anecdotal information about Juan Vázquez, reports……..” I was in various camps, we traveled together in Europe in 1948, we continued to see each other then at the Catholic University, where we both taught Social Doctrine of the Church, until shortly before his death. ".
Father Manuel Moledo said about him “I believe that if JAC has given us a saint, that saint is Vázquez.”
Fr. Dr. José Luis Kaufmann, Judicial Vicar, President of the Interdiocesan Ecclesiastical Tribunal “C” of La Plata, refers by saying that “what remained impressed in my heart was a phrase by Vázquez: “There is no room for mediocre people among the young people of JAC and if there were any, they would either stop being mediocre or stop being part of Catholic Action”.
We too, who knew him in the final phase of his life, have been able to discover in him the passage of a saint in our young life. He taught us to love the Church and Catholic Action, he taught us to be a community of friends, he “hammered” us to exhaustion on the vital importance of integral formation and apostolate; He took us to his beloved “Cabaña Pío XI”, next to Mascardi as Jesus took Peter, John and James to Tabor.
He appreciated our lay vocation, blessed and accompanied our young marriages, played with our first children like a grandfather, always imparting a teaching to tenderly shape their character and open their hearts towards God, their Mother, the Church, Catholic Action.
He knew how to guide, orient, encourage the journey, in the school of sacrifice for love, he spread joy and enthusiasm, even in the face of a horizon that worried him. He spent hours confessing at home, something for which he had the authorization of his diocesan Bishop, he was never in a hurry to assist us and listen to us. He left like the saints, for this reason he did not leave us.
In 1992 he had to be admitted to Cottolengo de Claypole, where he died on 10 December, and is buried there.
original in Spanish on the website of the Catholic Action Argentina
«Let's not say that today it is more difficult;
it's different. Let's learn rather
by the saints who have gone before us
and they faced the difficulties
characteristic of their era".