Ecuador marks 75 years since death of Basque missionary Father Guisasola
Church leaders from the Basque dioceses of Vitoria, Bilbao and San Sebastián traveled to Ecuador's Los Ríos province for events honoring Máximo Guisasola, who led the first diocesan mission in the history of the Church
Ecuador remembered Máximo Guisasola over the weekend, 75 years after his death. He was the priest who led the first expedition of the Misiones Diocesanas Vascas (Basque Diocesan Missions) to what was then the Mission of Los Ríos, the first mission run by a single diocese in the history of the Church.
Guisasola was part of the group that left for Ecuador on October 12, 1948. He was then spiritual director of philosophy students at the Seminary of Vitoria, in the Basque Country. Traveling with him were Elías Zuloaga, Víctor Garaygordovil, Leandro Zaloña, Eusebio Ocerinjáuregui, Gregorio Alonso, Francisco Arraibi and Luis Alberdi. Since 1948, almost a thousand priests, religious sisters, religious brothers and laypeople have served as missionaries through the initiative. Vitoria became the first diocese in the world with mission territories entrusted to it and recognized by the Holy See. The dioceses of Bilbao and San Sebastián were created the following year, in 1949.
Commemoration in Los Ríos
The bishop of Bilbao, Joseba Segura, and the mission directors of the dioceses of Vitoria, San Sebastián and Bilbao, Fran Izquierdo, Koldo Muro and Manuel Heredia, traveled to Ecuador for the events marking the 75th anniversary of Guisasola's death. They ran through September 8 and included visits to soup kitchens, schools, shrines and parishes in Babahoyo, Quevedo and Ricaurte, in the Ecuadorian province of Los Ríos. The main ceremony was held on September 7 in Vinces, where Guisasola worked as a missionary and where he is buried.
Missionary work and schools
The Basque bishops named Guisasola superior of the group. Based in Vinces, he promoted evangelization in the area, and less than a year after his arrival, on August 9, 1949, the Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús school opened. For decades the school was the mission's main educational work for the most disadvantaged children, and it is still open today, teaching young children.
That first expedition gave rise to a Basque missionary movement that spread after Los Ríos to El Oro and Manabí, also in Ecuador, and later to Venezuela, Brazil and Chile. It also reached Angola, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda.
Death and canonical recognition
Guisasola died on September 1, 1951, while traveling in a mixed goods and passenger vehicle from Guayaquil to Vinces. The vehicle collided with a tanker truck at a spot known as "Petrillo", on the road to Daule. His remains, which could be identified only by a fragment of his cassock, were buried at the main entrance of the church of San Lorenzo de Vinces. The local community still visits his grave with devotion.
Nine days after his death, on September 10, 1951, the bull Digni sunt was published, turning the Apostolic Vicariate of Los Ríos into a prelature. It ceased to be mission territory and became an ecclesiastical jurisdiction in its own right.
