In Pace Christi

Bro. Salvador was born on 8 September, 1929, at Tlazazalca, Michoacán, Mexico. In April, 1956, at 27 years of age, he joined the Comboni Missionaries. Twenty days later he was at Moctezuma, in Mexico City, the first community opened by the Comboni Missionaries in central Mexico. There, as he himself relates, he found another eight young people, all Brother aspirants who, like himself, were seeking an answer to their desire to be missionaries.

In 1957, he entered the novitiate in the parish of Tepepan, Xochimilco. This led to his taking his religious vows on 5 June, 1959. He was asked to stay at the house of formation to exercise his trade as a tailor, something useful for the new novices who were then joining the Institute.

His first appointment abroad was to Pordenone, Italy, where he worked in formation. In 1966 he returned to Mexico and was appointed to Nazareth House to assist young orphans to learn a trade. He stayed there for eight years until 1974, when the house was handed over to the Mercedarians.

After that experience, Bro. Salvador was appointed to the Province of Ecuador from 1975 to 1981, when he returned to Mexico and spent a year in Guadalajara community. In 1982, he was sent to Tuxtepec Oaxaca, as procurator for the missions of that area until 1994, when he was moved to Sahuayo, Michoacán, as bursar and in charge of the house.

In 2008, after working eighteen years in “michoacane” territory, where he found simple people and sincere friendship and where he spent the longest period of his missionary life, he was sent to Oasis House where, as he wrote, “I take care of my health and my religious duties. It is here that God allows me to live this precious time waiting to reach my Golden Jubilee as a religious Comboni missionary”.

After two years of suffering, borne with love and joy, faithful to the end to his missionary vocation, Bro. Salvador, “God’s Tailor”, was struck with pneumonia. He died on the morning of 9 June, 2014, at Zapopan (Jalisco), having received the last sacraments on the feast of Pentecost.
Da Mccj Bulletin n. 262 suppl. In Memoriam, gennaio 2015, pp. 54-56.