Charlie Rodríguez, first contemporary beatified layman in the Americas

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 13, 2024 / 04:00 am

July 13 marks the feast day of a dynamic, enthusiastic Catholic layman from the Caribbean who was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

Known as “Charlie” — abbreviated to just “Chali” in his most intimate circle — from childhood Carlos Manuel “Charlie” Rodríguez exuded a gift and zeal for communicating the tremendous value and vitality of the Catholic faith.

“He lived according to the maxim ‘the zeal of your house has eaten me up,’” recalled renowned Puerto Rican endocrinologist Dr. Francisco Aguiló, who was among the young people indelibly impacted by Charlie’s apostolate at the University of Puerto Rico’s (UPR) main campus in Río Piedras in the 1950s and early 1960s. 

“That’s the way he always insisted the Christian should feel for his Church, understood as the mystical body of Christ, as well as for the Liturgy, the life of the Church,” added Aguiló in his 1994 book “A Puerto Rican Saint?” (“¿Un santo puertorriqueño?”).

Aguiló, along with his wife, UPR chemistry professor Carmen Delia “Delí” Santana, were both instrumental in spearheading the effort that led to Charlie’s canonization cause. In his book, Aguiló chronicles Charlie’s short but fruitful life, including the “calvary” and “dark night of the soul” he suffered before dying in “odor of sanctity” of cancer in 1963 at age 44.

The chronic colitis that plagued Charlie throughout most of his life and impeded the completion of his studies at UPR did not impede him from either attaining remarkable intellectual heights or, more importantly, sharing his engaging experience and knowledge of the faith with others. 

“Never did we see him so openly happy as when he referred to the psalm: ‘Our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with joy,’ — and immediately described the feeling of the Israelite with the heart and lips filled with joy as he approached Zion,” members of the Carlos M. Rodríguez Circle (his former disciples), led by Aguiló, would testify later in the process leading up to his 2001 beatification. “And he would tell us of the greater joy of one who, having sown in tears, was content to reap his harvest in the heavenly Jerusalem.”

He was known to be a voracious reader. By making the most of his innate capacity and extraordinary memory, he became a self-taught Catholic intellectual in his own right. His thought was deeply influenced by the writings of such saints and luminaries as St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, St. Charles de Foucauld, Cardinal John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, and St. Edith Stein. 

Impact of his teaching

Charlie centered his catechetical labor not on apologetical questions but on communicating to others the personal and collective efficacy of the liturgical life of the Church. His primordial concern was to stimulate laypersons’ full understanding of — and participation in — the holy sacrifice of the Mass and all the events and spirituality that takes place in the life of the Church throughout the liturgical year.

Charlie intensely promoted the Easter Vigil as the defining moment of Christian spiritual life. He emphasized the definitive triumph of Jesus Christ in the redemption of human beings and the world, made manifest by Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection from the dead.

Using well-developed bilingual skills in Spanish and English obtained while attending Catholic schools both in his hometown of Caguas and nearby San Juan, for example, Charlie translated “Of Sacraments and Sacrifice” and “Preparing for Easter” by Father Clifford Howell, SJ. 

The liturgy was of great interest to him, but not merely for its externals. “Charlie made us understand that the true meaning of ‘liturgy’ comes from its Greek roots: ‘leiton’ (people) and ‘ergon’ (work). It is the most important work for the people: the redemptive action of Christ and its continuity in the Church,” members of the Carlos M. Rodríguez Circle later testified.

Father Oscar Rivera, the abbot of St. Anthony Monastery in Humacao, Puerto Rico, who served as adviser to the Carlos M. Rodríguez Circle, notes that the Christ and paschal-centered spirituality that characterized Charlie and his students was at the time “unique in a great part of the Church, not only in Puerto Rico, but in the entire world.” 

Rivera also observes that Carlos Manuel was the prototype of a proactive layman. The way in which he advocated innovation within the established doctrine and tradition of the Church, Rivera adds, “constituted a challenge to both laypersons and religious, a challenge which continues to hold validity.”

University apostolate

The most impactful years, in the 1950s and early 1960s, of Charlie’s lay apostolate took place at the University of Puerto Rico, where his brother Pepe and his sister Haydee worked as professors.  

During most of this time, Charlie was working as an office clerk at the UPR’s Agricultural Experiment Station. Together with a handful of professors and students, Charlie met with Father Antonio Quevedo, SJ, to discuss the need to revitalize the campus’ Catholic University Center.

With the full support of Father Quevedo, Charlie took the lead in organizing the Christian Culture Circle at the Catholic University Center. In its statement of purpose, the Circle, which aimed to help its members become genuine, apostolic Catholic intellectuals, affirmed: “We need Catholics who live in the present, who are awake to the current moment and who at the same time know how to use all the good of the present without falling into modernism. Catholics who are nourished from both the past and present, but with their eyes on the future … Catholics who know how to make the most of the time at hand, and who know that the ultimate and most transcendent development has been manifested to them through the sacraments.”

Communication of the Christian life

Through the organization of discussion and study groups, coupled with days of reflection, social activity, and the virtually single-handed publication of materials such as the magazine Christian Culture, during more than a decade’s worth of apostolic work at the UPR’s Catholic University Center Charlie dedicated himself to communicate — to students and professors alike — the vitality, coherence, and relevance of the faith. 

More than half a dozen religious vocations were the fruit of his labor, including those of his brother Pepe and sister Haydee. 

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Promotion of cause

Although Charlie’s disciples would continue to meet sporadically in the years following his death, it wasn’t until 1987 — the year that Pope John Paul II declared the “Year of the Layman” — that the group decided to organize, with the enthusiastic approval of the late Cardinal Luis Aponte Martínez of the Archdiocese of San Juan, the process leading up to Carlos Manuel’s beatification. 

The Circle’s feelings for Charlie were summed up by professor Santana, who stated: “I hope he will be canonized, not for his benefit but because the Church needs models of contemporary sainthood, especially of laymen who have not done anything extraordinary in this world, but who have done ordinary things with a great love for God and his Church.”

Approval of miracle

Following an intense investigative process both in San Juan and in Rome, in 1997 Pope John Paul II declared Carlos Manuel “Venerable.” This title was the result of having confirmed that he had lived all the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) as well as cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) in a heroic manner.

In November 1999, medical authorities in San Juan and in the Vatican confirmed that in 1981 — seven years before the initiation of Carlos Manuel’s canonization cause — Delí, who had been diagnosed with malignant lymphoma, had been suddenly and completely cured, and that in the absence of a medically-grounded reason for the cure, the only explanation that remained was the pleading for Charlie’s intercession by Aguiló.

His future canonization as a full-fledged saint now awaits the certification of a second miracle.

The example of Charlie’s beatification has helped to subsequently stimulate the sainthood causes of other exemplary lay and religious throughout the world. The beatification of this humble, winsome contemporary lay apostle is, without a doubt, a well-deserved distinction for Puerto Rico and a source of inspiration for Catholics everywhere.