A 100-Year-Old Priest Was Nudged From His Parish. He Has No Plan to Retire.

[douglas9]

BEAUMONT, Texas — The priest needed a hand while tugging on layer after layer of vestments. He carried a magnifying glass to help him read a handwritten list of prayer intentions. But as he jingled a bell to let the congregation know that Mass was beginning, he abandoned his walker and cane, singing along with the choir as he ambled up the center aisle toward the altar.

“He knows the difficulty of our life — it’s not easy,” the Rev. Luis Urriza said in Spanish, describing Jesus’s familiarity with the struggles of his followers.

“He has been tested in all manners,” Father Luis said. “Exactly like us.”

In fact, Father Luis faced a test of his own, perhaps his most daunting. At the age of 100, nearly 70 years after he had established the humble Cristo Rey Parish to nurture a small but burgeoning Latino community in southeast Texas, he was now being forced to leave it behind.

Not long after his birthday in August, the Catholic bishop of Beaumont told him that the time had come. Another, younger pastor was taking over at Cristo Rey. His order was sending Father Luis off to a new assignment in Spain, his home country, to join other priests serving in a church near Madrid.

He did not want to leave. His parishioners organized a march hoping to convince the bishop to change his mind. “Viva Cristo Rey!” they chanted. “Viva Padre Luis!” But the decision stood.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/us/luis-urriza-priest-texas.html

[snowybirdie]

1. Another example

of how The Church must be obeyed. Why not let the poor old priest spend the rest of his life in a place he loved rather than a place he'd left many decades ago? No respect for this good man's wishes.