By Marc Geller, The Monitor, McAllen, Texas, The Monitor, McAllen, Texas
Dec. 17–McALLEN — Monsignor Juan Nicolau still remembers the sadness nearly six decades ago when his parents sent him to the seminary in his native city of Mallorca, Spain.
“I was 9 years old,” he said. “I remember that my daddy couldn’t stop crying when he left me at the seminary so small. And he did not tell me good-bye. He started to cry, and he left.”
Nicolau’s father hoped the oldest of his three sons would carry on the family hospitality business. His parents planned for their son to get an education, not to become a priest, and the seminaries offered the best education in Spain at that time.
“I spent 13 years locked in the seminary,” Nicolau said. “When I was there and I was 18 years old, I made the choice to become a priest and to stay in the seminary.”
Now 68 years old, the popular priest with the Castilian accent will celebrate the 45th anniversary of his ordination today at the McAllen parish church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
After wearing the cloth longer than most people in the Rio Grande Valley have been alive, Nicolau said he has no regrets about the decision he made all those years ago.
“After these 45 years, I’ve realized now that I wouldn’t give up my priesthood for anything or for anybody,” he said.
“I get emotional,” he added, coughing briefly as if to clear his throat of an obstruction there. “I wouldn’t give up my priesthood for anything or for anybody, living or dead, because it’s my life. It is in my blood, it was the call of Jesus to me.”
Even though his parents hadn’t planned for him to become a priest, Nicolau said his mother in particular was pleased with the path her son chose. They were a well-to-do family but also very religious. His paternal aunt Micaela was a nun, and his brother Bernardo is a Franciscan priest.
“Even though I could have had the chance to leave (the seminary), I knew in my heart inside of me that to be a priest will be fulfilling something that I was needing, because nobody and nothing was filling up my heart to the brink. And so I realized that to be a priest is to serve people, to be dedicated to the people, and that’s what I have been doing, because I like multitudes.”
Nicolau — who said the three high points of his life were his baptism into the Catholic Church, his ordination as a Catholic priest and his naturalization as a U.S. citizen — described the void he felt before joining the priesthood.
“I was feeling empty,” he said. “My family is well off, and I could have had everything I wanted “¦ but I was not happy. So I said, now I’m going to study to be the best educated that I can be.
“But also I think that marriage would not have been satisfying me completely. There was an emptiness. And now I feel very happy having answered this call.”
That’s not to say, though, that he didn’t have other pursuits. Asked what he might have done if he hadn’t become a priest, Nicolau responded even before the question was completed.
“Lawyer,” he said, explaining that he studied law for one year in Spain after he joined the priesthood. It was the intellectual challenge that appealed to him most.
“I love to study,” he said, sharing his formula for contentment: “One hour of prayer a day, one hour of exercise and two hours of study.”
His love of knowledge is evident. Though he never got a law degree, he earned a licentiate’s in sacred theology, a master’s degree in counseling and guidance, and another master’s degree in science. And he is licensed in the state of Texas as a professional counselor, a marriage and family therapist and a medical psychotherapist.
“My sermons are full of theology but also psychology,” he said. As if to underline the point, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the mental health professional’s bible — seemed to peek out from among the various religious texts on his shelves.
“I touch not only the spirits, the soul, but also the heart and the mind,” Nicolau said.
But sometimes even priests need metaphysical healing. The last two years haven’t been easy for the man who until March had spent nearly eight years at the helm of the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan Del Valle National Shrine. His last year included being named in a lawsuit by three former employees at the shrine, a case that eventually went to mediation.
“I have gone through very difficult times these past two years, as a priest and as a human being,” he said.
Citing health reasons and heavy stress, Nicolau resigned March 9 as rector of the San Juan shrine.
“I have been tempted to leave everything for different reasons,” said Nicolau, who took a three-month sabbatical after leaving the shrine. “During this time, one of the biggest temptations was not to come back, not to come back at all, to go back to Spain and to retire.”
He said it was the counsel of the Virgin Mary and his love for the Brownsville diocese that convinced him otherwise.
“I think the crisis I went through these past two years has been an incentive to grow my faith that Jesus and Mary are with me and the people are with me,” he said.
Nicolau now enjoys the relative obscurity of being the parish pastor at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. But his Masses still resonate with the mariachi music he brought to them more than three decades ago.
“I was the first one to have mariachi Mass in the Valley in 1972, and I was criticized by many people: “ËœWhy in the world does Father Nicolau have mariachis during the Mass?'”
To him, though, it made perfect sense.
“The Mexican people, especially, use mariachis for all the occasions in their lives: baptisms, marriages, quinceaneras, funerals and pachangas.”
While talking about his 45 years as a priest and his love and devotion to what he called his three mothers — his physical mother, now 94, who still lives in Mallorca; his mother, the Catholic Church; and his mother, the Virgin Mary — Nicolau asked forgiveness from those he may have wronged.
“I would like to ask forgiveness if I have hurt anybody in the Valley during my 37 years as a priest in the Valley,” he said.
“I know that everybody is a good person,” he added.
Nicolau recalled the words his bishop said as he explained why the Church was admitting him to the priesthood at such a young age — he was 22 at the time.
“Bishop Hervas from Mallorca told me, “ËœI know that you don’t have the canonical age (of 24); however, I’m going to ordain you because I know that you are going to be trying to be a good priest.’
“And that is what I have been doing: trying to be a good priest for 45 years.”
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Marc B. Geller covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4445.
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Copyright (c) 2005, The Monitor, McAllen, Texas
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