By Florida Catholic staff - Florida Catholic
MIAMI | Msgr. Emilio Martin died Feb. 27, 2025, at age 96 after 73 years of priesthood. The Spanish native served over 50 years in the Archdiocese of Miami including two decades as the founding pastor of St. Joachim Church in South Miami Heights and as pastor for another twenty years at St. John the Apostle Parish in Hialeah until his retirement in 2012. He had received hospice care in Atlanta, Ga., where he resided with a family caregiver.
Msgr. Emilio Martin: Born Nov. 23, 1928; ordained Feb. 17, 1952; died Feb. 27, 2025.
Msgr. Martin was born on Nov. 23, 1928, in Zamora, Spain. He was ordained in the diocesan seminary in Tuy and was ordained a priest on Feb. 17, 1952. He first served as a parish administrator, chaplain and vocations director in Spain for his first seven years of ministry. Every year bishops would come to recruit priests to serve in Latin America but when a bishop from Amarillo, Texas, came in 1959 seeking priests to serve the Spanish speaking Catholics, he felt the call to serve in the United States, he told the Miami Herald in a 1971 interview. He also said that he always knew he wanted to be a priest since childhood and was the first in his family to serve the church through a vocation.
After serving in Texas for two years he came to the then-Diocese of Miami in 1961. His first assignments in South Florida were as parochial vicar at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Port Charlotte (1961-64) and later at St. John the Apostle Church in Hialeah (1964-65 and 1968-70). Incardinated in 1969, he served as associate pastor at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Miami (1965-67); Immaculate Conception Church in Hialeah (1967-68); and St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Key West (1970). The church was elevated to a minor basilica by Pope Benedict XVI Feb.11, 2012.
From 1972 to 1992, he served as founding pastor of St. Joachim, overseeing construction of the church. In 1992 he returned to serve as pastor of St. John the Apostle until his retirement in October 2012. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI granted him the title of monsignor. At the time, he told the Florida Catholic that becoming a monsignor “simply means to continue serving the Church with greater priestly zeal and a greater spirit of service in my ministry to this wonderful community of St. John’s. I am profoundly grateful to our beloved Archbishop John Favalora and to the clergy of this great archdiocese, but above all to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for naming me a prelate of honor.”
- Funeral services and viewing details will be announced.
