Vatican decree on 19th-century doctor’s canonization leaves Venezuelans rejoicing

Venezuelan Catholics attended cheerful Masses and held processions on Feb. 26, the day after Pope Francis approved the canonization of Blessed José Gregorio Hernández, a 19th-century medical doctor who modernized medicine in the South American nation and was known for his fervent faith and willingness to serve the poor.

In an audience Feb. 24 with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, substitute for general affairs of the Secretariat of State, the pope, still in Rome’s Gemelli hospital, gave the green light for Blessed José Gregorio’s transition to sainthood, making the doctor the Caribbean nation’s first saint.

In Venezuela, where he is widely revered, with a prayer card or figurine of the medic in nearly every home, hundreds attended a Mass in the capital, Caracas, where people sang the national anthem and waved the nation’s flag as fireworks were set off outside La Candelaria, a church in the center of the city where Blessed José Gregorio is buried.

“The joy that people are feeling is marvelous” said Father Gregory Lobo, a priest in Caracas who led a procession to celebrate Blessed José Gregorio’s accession to sainthood announced four years after his 2021 beatification. The date for the canonization has not been announced, with Pope Francis convening a consistory to set the dates for future canonizations.

“For us this should be an incentive. A lesson that in the midst of difficult times we can make an effort to do things well. Whether we are doctors, lawyers, engineers or priests, we can do things well and help others,” Father Lobo told journalists gathered at the La Candelaria church.

Blessed José Gregorio was born in 1864 in Isnotú, a small village in the Andean mountains.

Education was scarce in rural Venezuela at the time, so at age 13 he was sent to Caracas to finish high school. He stayed in Caracas studying medicine and was offered a job in the capital upon graduation, but decided to return to his village, because there were no doctors there.

But thanks to his discipline and intelligence, he had become one of the most promising young doctors in the country, and his mentors convinced him to travel to Paris where he studied internal medicine and bacteriology with a government scholarship.

After returning to Venezuela, Blessed José Gregorio became one of the first doctors to work with microscopes in the country. He also founded the nation’s first bacteriology lab. He was a polyglot, piano player and horseback rider — a skill he used to reach poor patients in remote areas.

Blessed José Gregorio displayed a strong faith in God, attending daily Mass. He tried to join two monasteries in Italy, but had to return to his country after falling ill in Europe.

The doctor became famous for providing free consultations to the poor. During the visit, he would display a bag with money — if a patient could afford to pay for the visit, they put money in; if they couldn’t, they could take money from the bag.

The doctor died in 1919, when he was hit by a car after leaving the pharmacy where he was picking up medicine to take to an impoverished woman. In the following years, Venezuelans began to pray at his tomb for health, with some placing small statues of the doctor in improvised altars at their homes.

The miracle that led to Blessed José Gregorio’s beatification was the inexplicable full recovery of a 10-year-old girl who was shot in the head in 2017 during a robbery attempt in Venezuela. Her mother, Carmen Ortega, prayed to the doctor at the hospital where her daughter was taken for emergency treatment.

Alexander Krinitzky was the doctor who operated on Yaxury Solórzano Ortega March 10, 2017.

“Scientifically, the wound was fatal from the start. In medicine, in these types of cases, we call it the golden hour, which consists of the first 60 minutes of paying attention to the patient to avoid secondary reactions. She received care seven hours after receiving the gunshot wound,” the doctor told Colombian Blu Radio on the day of Hernández’s beatification.

Church leaders in Venezuela have been seeking Blessed José Gregorio’s canonization since the late 1940s. In 1949, Venezuelan church officials opened his sainthood cause, and in 1986, he was declared “venerable.” Ten years later, when St. John Paul II visited Venezuela, he was handed a petition signed by 5 million people, or one fourth of the population at the time, asking the pope to declare the beloved doctor a saint.

“This historic event, long awaited by the Venezuelan people, is a recognition of the exemplary life and heroic virtues of a man who dedicated his existence to alleviating human suffering and transmitting a message of love and hope,” the Archdiocese of Caracas said in a statement about the canonization.

“The Catholic Church recognizes his life of holiness, accompanied by a universal devotion, which today allows him to be elevated to the altar.”

Hernan Olano, a canon lawyer from Bogotá, Colombia, said that the decision highlights the role of laypeople in the church, and encourages the faithful to “live the Gospel through service to others.”

“His figure transcends religious spheres,” Olano said. “It has become a model of a life based in faith, science and service.”

Many devotees credit Blessed José Gregorio with performing a wide range of medical miracles, that include curing people from cancer or helping infertile couples to have kids.

“I think it’s great that he will be turned into a saint,” Fabio Moreno, a devotee in Bogotá, told OSV News. “But it’s something that should have happened a long time ago, because we are not just talking about a couple of miracles that have been registered by the church, but thousands of miracles.”

A devotion to one of the most beloved Venezuelans in the history of the country spreads to neighboring countries, sometimes in controversial ways.

Moreno belongs to a group of Blessed José Gregorio’s followers that run so-called “clinics” in Bogotá, where spiritual healers receive patients that have all kinds of illnesses. The healers claim they can communicate with Hernández’s spirit, to cure their patients through prayer and other alternative treatments.

The centers are not approved by the church, canon lawyer Olano emphasized.

“The church recognizes the intercession of saints through prayer and faith,” said Olano. “But it does not recognize practices that involve mediums.”

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