July 2023
There’s an old saying that goes: ‘You can do a great deal of good in the world, as long as you don’t mind who gets the credit for it’. As anyone who knew him will agree, this perfectly sums up the genial, generous approach to life, and to Camino projects in particular, exemplified by the late D. Angel Fernández de Aránguiz, better known as ‘Padre Angel’.
When I first met him, back in 1989, he was the much-loved Principal of the residential college in Veguëllina de Orbigo, León, run by the ‘Padres Pallottinos’, the teaching Order founded by the Italian priest Antonio Pallotti. Later, as its Superior in Spain, he was based in Ponferrada, and later still, at Carranza, in his native Basque country, as Administrator of the Order’s retreat centre.
These would have been full-time jobs for most of us, but Padre Angel was not just highly capable, but endlessly sociable and energetic, and even more so once he became involved with the pilgrimage to Compostela. By the early 90s, pilgrim numbers were rising and the associations of ‘Amigos del Camino’ along the Camino Frances were seeking links with similar groups outside Spain. Angel’s fluent German enabled him to bring Spanish and German organisations together to create seven pilgrim albergues along the route. If you have ever stayed in the albergues in Azofra, Hospital de Orbigo, Santibañez de Valdeiglesias, Foncebadon, El Acebo, Ponferrada or La Faba, you can say ‘thank you’ to Padre Angel, who shepherded each of them into being. His guiding spirit was everywhere, from persuading donors to finance them to organising working parties to build them and later, to finding the furniture. Add to this the fact that several were built with the help of dozens of young people from both countries, for whom these projects became milestones in acquiring life skills. The result has been an ever-widening circle of good for the benefit of pilgrims, set in motion by a remarkable man who never sought or accepted personal recognition.
I’ve said nothing about his work for the Archicofradia de Santiago Apostol, nor about the book he co-authored with a German friend and later translated into Spanish as El Camino Lleva a Casa (and I into English as Pilgrim Journey, Homeward Way). For years, around the edges of his other responsibilities, he acted as a guide for the German tour group Biblische Reisen, introducing travellers to the art and architecture of Spain’s pilgrimage roads.
Padre Angel died on 13 June 2009. He remains unrecognised by officialdom, but Camino friends revere and miss him still, and the good he did lives on.