New bishop�s family comes from Peru to celebrate ordination

By Rocio Granados - La Voz Catolica

Photography: TTracy and ARSoto | FC

MIAMI | The feeling was mutual among Bishop Enrique Delgado’s siblings: It’s a blessing and a grace to have a brother who is a priest.

Eight of his 11 brothers and sisters, along with their respective families, traveled from as far away as Oxapampa, Peru, and Manassas, Virginia, to attend his Dec. 7 ordination as a bishop at St. Mary Cathedral.

“It’s a great pride and joy for the whole family,” said Rocío Delgado, one of the new bishop’s five sisters. She still gets emotional when recalling how she heard about his appointment, which was announced Oct. 12.

A few days earlier they had spoken, and “he was very happy. He told me changes were coming, good ones, to wait until Thursday. He couldn’t tell me anything,” Rocío said. Sure enough, very early Thursday morning she received by email the Holy See’s announcement of his official appointment.

“I cried, my heart was jumping, it was a very emotional thing,” she said.

“My father was very proud,” said Bishop Delgado.

His younger brother, Mario Delgado, who lives with his father in Peru, said they received a call from Enrique at 5:30 a.m. Oct. 12.

“My father started calling all my brothers and sisters to tell them the news,” said Mario. And family members started planning the trip.

Upon the recommendation of their oldest brother, Rafael Delgado, a physician, the bishop’s father did not attend the ordination. At his age, 94, “making a 36-hour trip is too exhausting. He understood that it would be better for him to stay there,” said Rafael. But their father watched the ceremony via the livestream produced by the Archdiocese of Miami.

The episcopal ordination served as an opportunity for bringing the family together, this time 27 of them. The last time they were all together was at their brother’s priestly ordination, celebrated in Lima’s Santísimo Nombre de Jesús (Holy Name of Jesus) Church by Miami’s then auxiliary bishop, Agustín Román. That’s where they took the last family photo together. Soon after, seven of his siblings emigrated to the U.S., and later their mother died.

Her children remember her as a woman who was very devoted to the faith, who “always wanted one of her children to be a priest or a nun,” said Pilar Delgado, a sister who lives in Virginia. Her prayers were heard when Enrique became a priest.

Bishop Delgado recalled that after his priestly ordination, his mother asked him for a blessing. What he asked her was: “Mother, I don’t want to be your priest. I want to continue being your son. Please don’t ask me to hear your confession.”

Although he never did, Bishop Delgado spoke constantly with her by telephone, and she would always ask him for a blessing.

Although the Delgados were a large family — seven brothers and five sisters — and their father, a banker, was the only one who worked, all the Delgado siblings are career professionals.

“It was my mother’s desire to make sure we all succeeded,” said Pilar. “She was a fighter who quietly did her things and helped those who needed it most.”

“She always said: ‘God will provide. We have to have faith that everything will turn out alright, and that way each one of us found their way,” she added. Her father, she noted, was always devoted to his family and looking after his children.

But what their parents did most was imbue their children with religious devotion. From a very early age, the siblings saw their parents example at home. Their father, Rafael, frequently took the family for Sunday Mass near their house, at the Shrine of St. Rose of Lima in Lima, where the remains of the patroness of the Americas and the Philippines are venerated.

When, on a Christmas Eve, “I sat them down in the dining room and told them, ‘I’m leaving everything and going to the seminary,” Bishop Delgado recalled, “my mother got very happy, she cried tears of joy. And my father hugged me and told me, ‘Count on us for whatever you need.’”

At the time, Bishop Delgado worked as manager of a company in Lima and had a promising career as an industrial engineer, with a master’s in economics.

“When he made the decision to go to the seminary it was a bit of a surprise and a bit of satisfaction to know that was his true vocation,” said Pilar.

But he decided to enter the seminary in Miami, not Peru, where his family resided. “I think it was a good decision because it was a new start in his life,” said Rafael Delgado.

For his part, Bishop Delgado remembers his first day in the seminary as “terrible.” In his last job in Lima he had a beautiful office with a secretary who brought him coffee every morning. “And all of a sudden I enter the seminary and the first task I’m assigned was to clean bathrooms. At that moment I realized that I had to start from the bottom again,” he said.

“I see my uncle as an example of life. He left his business career to do something better, which is what he is doing now, and we are seeing the fruits,” said Armando Pino, one of the new bishop’s 23 nieces and nephews.

“He is an example of faith, of trust in God, of perseverance. I think the road has been long for him,” said another niece, Luz, who traveled from Lima for the ordination.

She was six years old when he was ordained a priest. “For us it was a beautiful family celebration. Afterward there was a dinner at my grandparents’ house.”

Her uncle, she said, “is constantly concerned about my grandfather. He always asks how he is. He is always grateful to the one who gave him life and faith because we recognize in the family that my two grandparents always had the faith in their hearts.”

Bishop Delgado loves to travel, but his favorite place to visit is Oxapampa, in Peru’s central region, where his father lives with his younger brother, who is a coffee grower. “When he gets there, he puts on his boots and goes to the farm,” said Pilar.

Although the new bishops has many siblings and nieces and nephews, and travels frequently to visit his family in Peru, none of them live in Miami.

But “for a priest, his parishioners become his family, his siblings, his fathers, his mothers; his other family,” said Bishop Delgado. He gets to know them “and becomes embroiled in their problems, weeps with their worries, their illnesses, their losses; rejoices in their triumphs, their baptisms, their weddings. All of that is the life of a priest.”