Father Mario Vizcaíno: A man who not only worked but encouraged and inspired

By Rocio Granados - La Voz Catolica

MIAMI | When Sister Carmen Alvarez came to Miami from her native Spain, she began working as director of religious education for the Spanish-language group at St. Benedict Church in Hialeah.

It was 1976, when she and seminarian and deacon Thomas Wenski, now the archbishop of Miami, went into the neighborhoods of Hialeah, “because we didn’t have a church. We were working in a shopping mall, and we celebrated Mass in a room,” Sister Alvarez said.

At that time the nun met Father Mario Vizcaíno, who celebrated Masses in Spanish in that parish, and Sister Alvarez prepared children who did not speak English for first Communion. When she asked for help, the priest accepted and “from that moment on, I connected with him,” said the Claretian missionary now in charge of catechesis at Corpus Christi Parish in Miami.

Their closeness led them to work together on different projects. They traveled to missions in Mexico for three years, where the priest celebrated Masses in the “rancherias” (small farms) and also attended several meetings of the Second and Third National Encuentro of Hispanic Ministry in Washington D.C.

They spent many Christmases together. He gave the end-of-year retreats for the Claretian nuns at their convent at St. Bartholomew Parish in Miramar.

“For me, he was like a brother, a spiritual director, and I always believed in him,” Sister Alvarez said.

“Mario was a man who not only worked, but also encouraged and inspired. I never saw him scold us,” the nun said of Father Vizcaíno, founder of the Southeast Pastoral Institute of Hispanic Ministry, SEPI.

That’s why many people followed him, “because he was a man who knew where he stood and communicated with people. He was a man who worked in the present with a view to the future,” said Sister Álvarez after the Mass in honor of the life and work of the priest, celebrated by Archbishop Thomas Wenski Dec. 4, 2024, at the SEPI.

Father Vizcaíno died on Feb. 13 of this year in the Piarist community of San José de Calasanz in Hialeah. He had been a Piarist religious for more than 60 years.

Several archdiocesan priests, friends and his niece, Patricia Reyes Vizcaíno, participated in the Mass.

“I remember him as a saint, as a beautiful person who gave his heart and soul for all mankind,” Reyes said. In the family sphere, Reyes said that when she was little, Father Vizcaíno took her ice skating and also took the seminarians. “And at Christmas and Thanksgiving, we always had a great time with him.”

In addition to being an uncle and friend, Father Vizcaíno was an educator, missionary, leader, and passionate servant of the Hispanic community. He founded SEPI, the educational arm of U.S. bishops' Regional Office for Hispanic Ministry, in 1979 and led it for nearly 40 years.

He worked tirelessly to meet the needs of the growing Hispanic population in more than 30 dioceses in the nine states that comprise the U.S. Southeast region. At the same time, he helped form future leaders in those communities.

Father Vizcaíno is the “emblematic figure of this entire evangelization effort since the origins of SEPI,” Archbishop Wenski said in his homily. He called him “a tireless missionary and teacher, Father Mario was for many years the soul of Hispanic ministry.”

With the creation of SEPI by the U.S. bishops, “and thanks to Father Mario, Hispanics have found a home in the Catholic Church in the southeastern United States,” the archbishop said.

After the Mass, Archbishop Wenski blessed a plaque with the image of Father Vizcaíno, which was placed behind the wall of the SEPI chapel, behind the tabernacle, in the newly baptized Father Mario Vizcaíno Square within the SEPI facilities.

The plaque is a smiling image of Father Vizcaíno made in Mexico with Talavera clay, accompanied by the phrase: “The Church has to be like Jesus.”

This image was chosen because “he was very jovial. Even if it was the ugliest day he had, his smile always welcomed you,” said Olga Villar, director of SEPI.

Villar added that the Mass with the archbishop was held at SEPI because “it was his home, his creation, and we wanted to pay tribute to him and remember the legacy of Father Vizcaíno.”

Villar hopes that a book about Father Vizcaino’s legacy will be published soon, based on a talk, “Christology and Ecclesiology of Father Mario Vizcaíno,” by Dr. Marzo Artime, presented last October in Miami during the annual National Catholic Association of Diocesan Directors for Hispanic Ministry (NCADDMH.)

“Father Vizcaíno died, but his work continues,” Villar added.