I knew him

The memory is built by everyone!

If you had the opportunity to know Father Ignacio well, and if you wish, you can send us a short video of your testimony on the experience you lived with him.

A Look at a Man of God

Ignacio Larrañaga says of himself, that he was born having a particular sensibility, probably inherited from his mother Maria Salome. He was blessed with a great gift of piety and a true hunger for God. However, he had to arduously walk down a path of detachment and humility, as he was also born with natural pride and impatience. It was that great pedagogy of surrender, which little by little taught him to overcome his character before the avatars of life.

That was how this “determined man”, without much patience was able to manifest in his final days touching degrees of tenderness and patience. He allowed himself to be worked over by God, as he knew how to do: with unbreakable faith and unlimited trust in God’s mercy. Thus, he was able to achieve an unperturbable peace when facing the demands of the “I.”

His legacy was to instill in people the vital need to live in a state of permanent conversion. In solitude and silence always holding prayer by the hand, just like Jesus did it, with a total focus on God. From there will flow rivers of grace channeled into the service of others, teaching men and women to be a little happier or at least to suffer less.

He possessed a persistent and instinctive demand for authenticity, a profound search for God. This demand for authenticity is the seal of his spirituality and of his prophetic and evangelic activity.

His time of prayer was sacred. When he was home, he would wake up at five thirty in the morning to have his personal prayer, which he did at his desk, in a very small room in his house in Santiago, Chile. There, he dedicated the first hours of the morning to the Lord, no matter how he felt; whether sleepy or wide awake, sick or healthy, with or without desire.

He insisted that personal prayer was indispensable, before going to Community Prayer with his brothers and sisters, where inevitably, giving is the same as receiving: the fullness of being oneself, of meeting with the other or others, has been and continues to be the means that he left in his spoken and written message.

He had a great aptitude for music, which he did not formally studied. In his first years of ministry in Spain, he served as the organist in the Church “Nuestra Señora de Lourdes de San Sebastian,” a function which at that time required an almost exclusive dedication. But he knew in the most intimate part of his being that his life as an organist did not satisfy the inner force that came into him in order to develop his priestly and religious vocation.

His love for music was outstanding. He liked to improvise on the old piano, which up to this day is well- preserved, in his home. His gift, over the years became a peculiar expression of his personality and an element that significantly helped him in his evangelizing mission. At the beginning of all his recorded messages, a small fragment of simple music is included, but at the same time is evocative, tender and sensitive. He tried to place the listener in a state of devotion, and for that, he generally selected baroque music, which he appreciated very much.

Another important hobby of Father Ignacio’s was reading. He was specially drawn to history books, although not historical novels. In his youth, he dedicated himself to reading with a lot of delight and enjoyment the works of humanistic authors, existential philosophers, poets, and thinkers like Kierkegaard, Dostoyewski, Unamuno, Paul Claudel, Leon Bloy, Ortega and Gasset, and other similar ones. He was equally interested in anthropology, sociology, and psychology. He felt a special predilection to Antonio Machado; He always traveled with the Bible and Machado’s poems in his hands.

In awe, he had a great capacity for admiration and freshness. For example: He could be overwhelmed and speechless with amazement before the magnificence of a starry sky in Northern Chile. His sensitivity led him to be ecstatic, both in front of the imposing height of a mountain as before a flowering tree.

Father Ignacio was a person that enjoyed living a simple life, like his parents whom were farmers in Guipuzcoa. He was the same way in both his clothing and eating. His love for animals comes from growing up in the fields. The Guides knew of his special affection for donkeys and dogs, therefore Father received gifts of them in all shapes and materials as gifts, which he saved in a special place on his office.

There are an infinite amount of anecdotes that could be told about the many facets of this man of God, who went throughout the world doing good and being a faithful instrument in the hands of God, announcing the Good News to whomever would listen to him, his only purpose that Love be loved.