Vilaflor wants the holy Brother Pedro to be appointed co-patron of the Canary Islands. The municipal plenary session unanimously ruled in this regard three months after the twentieth anniversary of the canonization of Pedro de San José de Bethencourt. For this, the Chasnero City Council directs such a request to José Mazuelos Pérez and Bernardo Álvarez Afonso, bishops of the Canariense and Nivariense Dioceses, respectively.
Agustina Beltrán, the mayor of Vilaflor, considers “fair” the recognition of Brother Pedro de Bethencourt as “de jure and principal co-patron of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands.” Along these lines, he explains that the Consistory “takes the first step to start a complex honors file, becoming news for being the spearhead so that the holy Brother Pedro, a reference of the Canary Islands and of these historic lands of the South, is co-patron of the Canary Islands”.
The chasnera Corporation also agreed to invite all Canarian institutions “to join this proposal with their letters of adherence.” In the opinion of Agustina Beltrán, “regardless of creeds or what the Constitution dictates regarding religious matters, it is fair to signify with this appointment the humanistic, social and historical character that Brother Pedro de Bethencourt has played, both in the Canary Islands and in South America, where his footprint remains almost unchanged.
Of the church that was projected in Los Cardones in his honor only the first stone exists
Pedro de Bethencourt was born in Vilaflor in 1626 and died in Guatemala in 1667. «His exceptional figure and work in favor of others continues to be, despite the more than three centuries that have elapsed since his death, a benchmark to follow for present and future generations”, says the official chronicler, Nelson Díaz.
He himself justifies the co-patronage with the argument that Saint Brother Pedro has roots in the two dioceses of the Archipelago. Thus, and with respect to the Diocese of Nivariense, because the island of Tenerife was his birthplace, while with respect to the Diocese of Canariense, because the majority of his ancestors, both on the paternal and maternal sides, were natives of the island from Gran Canaria who joined the Castilian army that conquered the island of Tenerife in 1496».
The founder of the Order of the Bethlemites was canonized in Guatemala City at 4:41 p.m. (9:41 a.m. in Guatemala, where the act took place) on July 30, 2002, by Pope John Paul II. It happened 335 years, two months and five days after his death. With this, he became the first saint born in the Canary Islands. On April 22, 2006, more than a thousand people attended the laying of the first stone of the church that was to be the parish of Santo Hermano Pedro, in the Los Cardones urbanization, in San Isidro. It was the beginning and end of the play, so far.
