HomeMy WebLinkAboutBiography Reverend Father Armando Llorente S.J.REVEREND FATHER
AMANDO LLORENTE S.J.
Fr. Llorente was the kind of adventurous and daring priest who, had he lived in the 16th
century, would have crossed the ocean with the conquistadores in order to have a hand in the
evangelization of the New World. Born and raised in Mansilla Mayor, near Leon, Spain in
August 24, 1918, he was the youngest member of a devoutly Catholic nine -child family.
His oldest brother, Segundo Llorente, was a famous Jesuit missionary in the then (1930)
remote and wild northern Alaska, and it was almost that young Amando would follow in his
footsteps. It was a matter of time for him to join the Society of Jesus.
Owing to the outbreak of the Spanish civil war he was forced to move to Marqian, Belgium for
his novitiate, which he interrupted to join the Nationalist movement as a volunteer. He saw action
in the Catalonian front where he served as a stretcher-bearer for nine months, until the bitter
conflict came to and end. He then resumed his formation, and upon completing the three years of
philosophy and science (1942), he was send by his superiors to the Americas, at a time in which
the II World War was raging and the Atlantic became a huge battlefield. After 28 days of perilous
voyage, however, he safely arrived in Havana where he was assigned to a job in Belen School;
assistant to Fr. Francisco Barbeito, the head of -the high school students division.
Full of life and vigor he quickly organized what was called the Belen Boy Scouts who
immediately embarked in a vast program of exploration.
Since every thing in Llorente's career pointed toward the youth apostolate, after he finished his
theological studies at Heythrope College, Oxford, and was ordained as a priest in September 8,
1948, he was again sent to Havana where he was supposed to become Belen's principal it just so
happened that at the moment what was needed was a director for a new retreat house that have
been built in el Calvario, near Havana, and there he went to fill the opening shortly after his
arrival. The change nevertheless gave him the opportunity of renewing his old friendship with Fr.
Felipe Rey de Castro, a distinguished Jesuit who has founded a sodality of university student and
professional men in 1931 which had grown to become widely respected institution.
All this time Fr. Rey gave the impression that he was preparing Llorente to become his
successor, and thus when he died in March of 1952 one was surprised when the agrupados chose
the young priest to become their new director, and that was he did for the next fifty eight years.
In 1959 when the storm was gathering over Cuba, and when the struggle against Communism
and oppression followed the agrupados figured in the first line of battle and many gave their lives
or spent long years in Castro's dungeons.
Perhaps Llorente's greatest achievement was to transplant the ACU from Cuba to the United
States (Miami, Atlanta, New York, Orlando, Gainesville, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Washington,
D.C.) He worked so hard and so well, assisted of course by Christ, the number one "agrupado",
that by 1965.the Jesuit General Fr. Pedro Arrupe in a letter to Llorente of July 16th he referred as
the ACU as "a select group and very close to the Society". Today it owns 21 1/2 acres of property
fronting Biscayne Bay, a complex that includes a retreat house among other things. Father
Amando Llorente S.J. died there the last April 28 ;at the time that the sun had just risen over
Miami.
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