The bishop emeritus of Tarazona, Fr. Eusebio Hernández, has shared his trajectory and experiences in the program ‘Emeritus’ of TRECE. With a life marked by his work in Rome after the Second Vatican Council and his episcopate in one of the smallest dioceses in Spain, Hernandez is still active in his retirement. Between travels, spiritual retreats and the writing of his latest book, he maintains his commitment to prayer and service. This is what he said in this interview.
After half a lifetime in Rome putting in place the documents that emerged from the Second Vatican Council, in 2011 he became bishop of one of the smallest dioceses in Spain, Tarazona, of which he is now its emeritus.
Once Pope Francis Pope Francis accepted his resignation in 2022, Eusebio Hernández decided to move to Zaragoza, where he has Madrid, Barcelona and his Tarazona at hand. But far from a retired life, he remains very active.
“The Pope wanted the whole Church to enter into a symphony of prayer by placing the Our Father at the center of prayer.”
To his travels to various corners of the world or leading spiritual retreats, he has recently written the book ‘Prayer attunes us to God’ in view of the. Jubilee 2025: “The Pope wanted the whole Church to enter into a symphony of prayer by placing the Our Father at the center of prayer,” he explained in the Emeritus’ program of TRECE.
He also finds time to visit his hometown, Cárcar (Navarra), where he was born in 1944. An agricultural town noted for “asparagus, which in those years was a source of wealth with three factories, now there is only one”.
His father, however, was a haulier and his mother a housewife. The eldest of a family of four brothers, Eusebio Hernández left Cárcar at the age of twelve to enter the seminary with the Augustinian Recollects. Augustinian Recollects.
THE STORY OF THE AUGUSTINIAN MISSIONARY WHO BROUGHT FORTH THE PRIESTLY VOCATION OF EUSEBIO HERNÁNDEZ
The bishop emeritus of Tarazona saw his vocation born in the early fifties thanks to the Augustinian Jesús Pardo Ojer, a missionary in the Purus, in the Amazon, born in the same town of Navarre as Eusebio Hernández.
“It was 1955, Jesús Pardo Ojer was one day with the children near the river, and he was praying and the Brazilian children were playing soccer, and the ball fell into the river. They, unconsciously, jumped for the ball and the boat turned over immediately and the four children began to drown. Then this Father, when he saw them, jumped in, brought the first one, saved the second, the third, the fourth and when he reached the last one, he had a heart attack and died on the bank of the Purus River. He was the martyr of charity that year, and he was from my town”.
AN ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD IN THE MIDST OF THE STUDENT REVOLTS OF 1968
Priestly ordination came on an iconic day and year: San Fermin in 1968. The revolts in Paris had reached the Spanish seminaries, where even the future priests organized small strikes: “We made a small strike against a teacher in 1967. We were a course a bit unruly and they told us that as a penalty we all went to the Philippines, on missions, because at that time it was considered a penance to go to the Philippines,” he recalled.
Then came his time in Madrid, where the echoes coming from Paris were more intense in the universities: “I lived intensely those years in the residence and shared life with students. Those were years of student strikes, I even had to run in front of the grey horses and get under the desks, because when they entered there was no contemplation. They were years of pleasant experience in which we were a little scared, the studies were difficult because it was not easy to combine studies with the environment that existed”.
THE INTENSE WORK OF EUSEBIO HERNÁNDEZ IN ROME DURING THE POST-CONCILIAR YEARS
In 1975, the bishop emeritus of Tarazona was transferred to Rome, where he joined the Congregation for Consecrated Life, in the field of conferences that group religious institutes, which in the case of Spain is the CONFER. It was in the Vatican, epicenter of the Catholic Church, where Eusebio Hernandez contributed to create the Episcopal Conferences in different countries.
“When I arrived there were about eighty episcopal conferences and when I left there were 150. To think that when I arrived there was the Berlin Wall and there was no possibility of creating conferences in the Eastern countries, and I had to go to Russia to create this conference, in Hungary, Romania, Poland…Eastern countries, or go to Cuba. And the conferences allowed me to get to know countries in Asia, South America, India…. This made us sensitive to the problems that were emerging, such as Liberation Theology, the option for the poor… I saw these problems first hand,” explained Hernández.
All this coincided with the post-conciliar period. In this sense, Eusebio Hernández confessed his love for the Second Vatican Council: “De Gaulle said that it was the most important event in the history of humanity. It allowed us to open the window, to go out and see what was happening in the world to be able to respond to it,” he said.
The bishop remembers them as exciting years but also of tensions, “because there were many departures” of priests who secularized: “I had to close an Intercongregational Theology Institute in Mexico where there was a strong Liberation Theology, the bishops were in disagreement and I had to put order in the conflict,” he recalls.
THE AFFECTIONATE MEMORY OF EUSEBIO HERNÁNDEZ TO THE PARISHIONERS OF TARAZONA
After 35 years in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him bishop of Tarazona in 2011. Looking back, he remembers this period “with special affection”, highlighting the simplicity and humility of his 60,000 parishioners.
One of the bishop’s memories was at the end of his ministry in the Aragonese diocese, in 2022, when the war broke out in Ukraine. war broke out in Ukraine. The bishop’s diocese was involved in helping: “There were people who wanted to go to Ukraine to bring them food, medicine, clothes…. Eight vans went to the border and the vans were brought back full of people”.
All of them were welcomed in the seminary of Tarazona: “They were in the best rooms, with heating, hot water, good beds…. At first some of them were upset, but I told them that they were the most needy. We had up to a hundred Ukrainians in the seminary. It was the most urgent need and we had to help them”, he stresses.