SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 10 Aug. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The CC-PNC group of the Cabildo de Tenerife will request that the Holy Brother Pedro de San José Betancur be declared co-patron of the Canary Islands to recognize his social work.
The nationalist counselor Efraín Medina will defend a motion for the Cabildo to support this initiative promoted by the Vilaflor de Chasna City Council, since Brother Pedro “stands out for his humanist work, which goes far beyond his religious or apostolic work.”
Efraín Medina pointed out that the work and figure of Brother Pedro is known throughout the world and arouses great devotion in Central America: “His concern for the people who suffer and his charity led him to carry out different initiatives that go beyond his religious work , such as the creation of a convalescent hospital or the first popular school for children and adults without distinction of race or sex”.
The counselor explained that the intention of the nationalist group is that the motion be approved and the resulting agreement be transferred to the City Council of Vilaflor de Chasna, to the two Dioceses of the Canary Islands and to the Episcopal Conference. In addition, Medina added, “we want the rest of the municipalities of Tenerife to support this request, which we think is fair.”
Pedro de San José Betancur, more popularly known as Hermano Pedro, Santo Hermano Pedro or San Pedro de Vilaflor, was a Franciscan tertiary religious and Spanish missionary, founder of the Order of Bethlemites. He became an apostle of the captives and protector of the Indians subjected to inhuman labor, of the emigrants and of the orphaned and abandoned children, to whom he dedicated special attention.
He built schools to educate them conveniently with criteria that are still qualified today as modern, since he did not distinguish between people based on their race or sex: boys and girls, whites, indigenous, blacks and mestizos could attend equally. Seeing the needs of the poor sick, expelled from hospitals, he founded the first convalescent hospital in the world.
Brother Pedro is the first native saint of the Canary Islands. He is also considered the first saint of Guatemala and Central America for having carried out his missionary work in those American lands. In addition, he is considered the evangelizer of Guatemala. He was beatified in 1980 in the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s Basilica and canonized in Guatemala City by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
