It happened in an afternoon ten years ago. My best friend Quico called me by phone. The new was incredible: Gabriel had dead knocked down by a truck.

Father Gabriel Vázquez Seijas was our spiritual director. He was is the spiritual director of a several generations of Catholic social activists. He had left his confortable life to become a priest when he got aware the material and spiritual poverty of Canido neighborhood in the city of Ferrol. He studied with the Society in Comillas University, and it was a very important detail because he was not only a social worker, he was an intelectual warrior too.

Besides of his important action in Ferrol, where he had important confrontation with the authorities defending workers and and handing out dangerous books in the street, he had a mission in the HOAC (Catholic Action Labour Brotherhood) in the years of dictatorship in Spain and he met there with Guillermo Rovirosa.

I  met Gabriel in Cáritas the year I finished my pre-university studies thanks to Quico. I had the target in work in cooperation when I had finished my degree, but he showed me I (we, everybody) can do an important work around. So now I’m a social volunteer.

Ten years ago my friends and me became spiritual orphans. We and another lot of people, that were helped in any moment of our lives by Gabriel, cryed his death. Now we have his life as testimony. Ten years after, I pray for being a worthy disciple someday.

“Attention to the poor must be considered only if you react to him as anyone”

–Father Gabriel Vázquez Seijas