The liturgy was of great interest to him, but not merely for its externals. “Charlie made us understand that the true meaning of ‘liturgy’ comes from its Greek roots: ‘leiton’ (people) and ‘ergon’ (work). It is the most important work for the people: the redemptive action of Christ and its continuity in the Church,” members of the Carlos M. Rodríguez Circle later testified.
Father Oscar Rivera, the abbot of St. Anthony Monastery in Humacao, Puerto Rico, who served as adviser to the Carlos M. Rodríguez Circle, notes that the Christ and paschal-centered spirituality that characterized Charlie and his students was at the time “unique in a great part of the Church, not only in Puerto Rico, but in the entire world.”
Rivera also observes that Carlos Manuel was the prototype of a proactive layman. The way in which he advocated innovation within the established doctrine and tradition of the Church, Rivera adds, “constituted a challenge to both laypersons and religious, a challenge which continues to hold validity.”
University apostolate
The most impactful years, in the 1950s and early 1960s, of Charlie’s lay apostolate took place at the University of Puerto Rico, where his brother Pepe and his sister Haydee worked as professors.
During most of this time, Charlie was working as an office clerk at the UPR’s Agricultural Experiment Station. Together with a handful of other professors and students, Charlie met with Father Antonio Quevedo, SJ, to discuss the need to revitalize the campus’ Catholic University Center. Then, as now, there was widespread, palpable hostility among many faculty members toward the Christian worldview in general and the practice of the Catholic faith in particular. Some professors were even known to yank Catholic medals off the necks of students.
With the full support of Quevedo, Charlie took the lead in organizing the Christian Culture Circle at the Catholic University Center. In its statement of purpose, the Circle, which aimed to help its members become genuine, apostolic Catholic intellectuals, affirmed: “We need Catholics who live in the present, who are awake to the current moment and who at the same time know how to use all the good of the present without falling into modernism. Catholics who are nourished from both the past and present, but with their eyes on the future … Catholics who know how to make the most of the time at hand, and who know that the ultimate and most transcendent development has been manifested to them through the sacraments.”
Communication of the Christian life
Through the organization of discussion and study groups, coupled with days of reflection, social activity, and the virtually single-handed publication of materials such as the magazine Christian Culture, during more than a decade’s worth of apostolic work at the UPR’s Catholic University Center Charlie dedicated himself to communicate — to students and professors alike — the vitality, coherence, and relevance of the faith.
More than half a dozen religious vocations were the fruit of his labor, including those of his brother Pepe and sister Haydee.
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Promotion of cause
Although Charlie’s disciples would continue to meet sporadically in the years following his death, it wasn’t until 1987 — the year that Pope John Paul II declared the “Year of the Layman” — that the group decided to organize, with the enthusiastic approval of Cardinal Luis Aponte Martínez of the Archdiocese of San Juan, the process leading up to Carlos Manuel’s canonization.
The Circle’s feelings for Charlie were summed up by professor Santana, who stated: “I hope he will be canonized, not for his benefit but because the Church needs models of contemporary sainthood, especially of laymen who have not done anything extraordinary in this world, but who have done ordinary things with a great love for God and his Church.”
Approval of miracle
Following an intense investigative process both in San Juan and in Rome, in 1997 Pope John Paul II declared Carlos Manuel “Venerable.” This title was the result of having confirmed that he had lived all the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) as well as cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) in a heroic manner.
In November 1999, medical authorities in San Juan and in the Vatican confirmed that in 1981 — seven years before the initiation of Carlos Manuel’s canonization cause — Delí, who had been diagnosed with malignant lymphoma, had been suddenly and completely cured, and that in the absence of a medically-grounded reason for the cure, the only explanation that remained was the pleading for Charlie’s intercession by Aguiló.