Valencia, Spain, Oct 27, 2009 / 21:07 pm
Bishop Jose Gea Escolano, who retired from the Spanish Diocese of Mondonedo-Ferrol and is currently a missionary in Peru explained this week that one of his most frequent tasks is hearing confessions each Sunday for “five to six hours...although on some days it has been 10.”
Bishop Gea, 80, recently marked his fourth year as a missionary in the Peruvian Diocese of Carabayllo, where he was sent after retiring from his diocese in Spain, which he served as bishop for 18 years.
He said he hopes to remain working “until the Lord wishes” as a missionary in Peru, “where there is a great shortage of priests” and thus an “urgent need for a greater presence of priests and missionaries.”
Bishop Gea also expressed his concern that families in Peru are suffering, “with marriages that are constantly breaking apart, and thus, with children who grow up without the stable and continual presence of their parents.”
In the Diocese of Carabayllo, Bishop Gea collaborates at the parish of Santa Maria de la Providencia, which has been under the care of Spanish missionaries for the last 16 years.