– Marco Carvalho
“Miracle worker”, “guardian angel”, “messenger of God”. The name of José Miguel Garcia Pereira – known all over Portugal simply as “Father Miguel” – still takes thousands of pilgrims to Soito, a small village in the municipality of Sabugal, less than 30 miles from Spain. The parish priest died in November 2001 but if it depended on the vast legion of followers and devotees he left, he would already have a dedicated place at the altars.
The insolvent sun of mid-August covers the empty expanses of Portugal’s interior with a veil of fire. Outside the Father José Miguel Social Center, a pair of users of the institution takes shelter from the warm afternoon sun under a plane tree, kept safe by a sturdy fence. Through the intercom it’s possible to devise the echoes of a doorbell and a soft rumble, but no one answers from inside the premises.
Intrigued by the visit, the pair – a round-faced giant and a wimpy, delicate old man – keep their distance. Albeit the indifference, their presence is a balm for the soul after a 15-minute walk through eerily unpopulated streets. There are dozens of cars parked on the side of the road, at some points on either side of the way, but there’s seemingly no one to be seen. In the parking lot of the Social Center, by contrast, there’s not a single vehicle to be found.
With facilities that leave nothing to the imagination, the institution, operated by the Associação Cristã “Paz e Bem”[Peace and Wellness Christian Association], is one of the places where the memory and the spiritual legacy of José Miguel Garcia Pereira is kept alive. The parish priest unwittingly transformed the quiet village of Soito, in the municipality of Sabugal, into one of Portugal’s main pilgrimage centers during almost thirty years.
Encouraged by the prelate’s reputation as a “miracle worker,” thousand of devotees began to make their way, in the late 1970s, to the parish of Meimão, in the neighboring municipality of Penamacor, and then to his home village, where he died in 2001 at the age of 89. On the 10th of November, the day in which the funeral was conducted, massive crowds took to the streets of Soito for a last farewell to the charitable priest whom the people hailed as a saint. All over the village, Portuguese national newspaper Público wrote at the time, there were hundreds of parked vehicles, a substantial number of which had French-registered license plates. Buses – from such disparate origins as the cities of Porto, Caldas da Rainha, Barcelos or Penafiel – could be counted by the dozens.
Devotees attributed countless graces and miracles to the humble priest, but José Miguel was always the first to disregard the label of holiness with whom he was assigned. Generous, with an aura of faith that was palpable to those who sought him, Father Miguel never claimed to be a saint, saying only that he had been chosen by God to be his interlocutor.
It is this aura of faith that continues to draw hundreds of pilgrims to Soito, almost twenty years after the cleric’s physical disappearance. A native of Santarém, in the centre of Portugal, Marisa Sousa fulfilled once again, in the last week of August, a yearly ritual that she has performed religiously since she was a child: “I met Father Miguel when I was seven, eight years old, when I was struck with a rare disease. My parents looked for answers everywhere. They consulted doctors and specialists, took me to witch doctors and healers, but no one had any idea about the disease. The means of diagnosis at the time were not very advanced,” the 36 years old recalls. “One day someone told them about Father Miguel and we made the trip from Santarém, hoping we could find some answers. I have spots on my skin and under those spots my muscles are atrophied. At the time, the appearance of those spots was constantly changing. After being blessed by Father Miguel, the disease stagnated. It wasn’t a cure, of course, but the disease never evolved,” says Marisa Sousa, speaking to O Clarim.
The charismatic priest became known for giving the children who visited him a coin, often of two escudos and fifty cents. The gesture, he argued, created a bond similar to the one that exists between godparents and godchildren, although without the spiritual protection conferred by baptism. Marisa has long lost track of the coin she received when she first met Father Miguel, but the episode – one which was repeated with thousands of children from all over Portugal – inspired the young woman to create a page on Facebook to honor the memory and the spiritual legacy of the beloved priest. The “Father Miguel’s Godchildren” Facebook page has 845 followers and brings together an extensive list of testimonies of graces and miracles that were allegedly obtained through José Miguel Garcia Pereira’s intercession: “I am just one among thousands of Father Miguel’s godchildren”, Marisa Sousa emphasizes. “Pilgrims continue to visit in large numbers the little chapel where he was buried, although the number of visitors has been decreasing as the years go by. As with the testimonies left on the page, the pilgrims visiting Soito are mainly Portuguese, but they come from all over the country”, she claims.
A long road to the altars
“Miracle worker,” “guardian angel,” “glorious protector”. These and other expressions abound in texts and comments on the Internet and in the social networks and most often precede the account of a grace allegedly granted through the intercession of Father Miguel. If it was up to the devotees, he would already have a captive place in the altars, but the attitude of those responsible for the Diocese of Guarda vis-à-vis to the popular acclamation has been one of cautiousness.
Such a posture does not surprise José Cunha Simões. The publisher, author of a handful of books on the life and legacy of José Miguel Garcia Pereira, argues that the restraint shown by the Catholic Church is in line with the dispossession and humbleness that Father Miguel himself kept all his life: “Father Miguel always refused the idea of holiness of any sort or degree while he was alive. He believed that he was a protégé of God and that God gave him energies to benefit those who believed he could heal and help them. The only condition was that they loved their neighbors like they loved themselves,” the 83-year-old editor says. “That energy produced effects according to our own purity. In the books I published about Father Miguel there are sufficient accounts of what can be seen as miracles, but he did not give them such an importance. He believed that we all have such an energy, that we all have what it takes to help those who suffer or those in need,” José Cunha Simões adds.
A former member of the Portuguese national Parliament, elected as an independent legislator on the lists of a right-wing party, Cunha Simões met Father Miguel in 1976, when he was Meimão’s parish priest. The meeting left a lasting impression: “From the first minute I met him, he was the confirmation that all beings are permanently connected with God,” the former parliamentarian admits.
José Cunha Simões is utterly convinced that the beloved priest’s admission to the honors of the altars is inevitable, even though the process concerning Father Miguel’s cause of beatification may take time to mature: “It seems to me that, due to Father Miguel’s position in life, the Church and his own family decided to let time go by. I believe that in the future, with the due restraint and new proofs, concerning facts that happened after his death, it will be possible to seek his beatification,” the veteran publisher sustains. “His nephew, Artur Rito Pereira, has collected quite a few extraordinary reports, but they won’t be brought to the public knowledge unless they can be properly studied and confirmed,” the former Portuguese legislator claims.
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