The experience of Saint Faustino Míguez (Orense, 1831 – Getafe, 1925) is framed in the context of the first demands of the movement that, at an international level, demanded space and freedom for women. The demonstration of women textile workers in New York (1857) demanded not only social and labor equality but, above all, the ability to decide about their own lives and to make choices based on a growing awareness of their personal dignity.
At the same time, St. Faustino, ordained a priest on March 8, 1856, began to sense the liberating potential of the education received in childhood. In the groove of the best Calasanzian tradition, Faustino will take up again the argumentation of the Memorial to Cardinal Tonti (1621) and will make his own the clichés and rhetorical strategies of the founder of the Pious Schools to proclaim openly in his Discourse of Celanova the goodness of the Piarist educational method and proposal.
When the workers take to the streets of New York demanding rights, Faustino educates and investigates in Guanabacoa, promoting integral health “in the image of the Divine Master”, while he works as a teacher trainer making possible in Cuba the school for all. New destinations open up new horizons for him in Celanova, El Escorial, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and Getafe (the latter twice): classes, tireless pastoral activity, research and, above all, the restlessness of one who lives “moved by the same spirit of St. Joseph Calasanz” to point out in different times and places, and in the cordial coincidence of a look at the ability to see “what others do not see”.
A man of deep faith, Faustino unveils reality, removing before the astonished eyes of his time the cloth that covers the faces of women and relegates them to invisibility due to lack of educational opportunities. In front of everyone, Faustino will affirm “the interest” in educating girls, seeing in them the essential element in the construction of modern societies. The cry of the New York demonstrators is made in Faustino through the school, the accompaniment, the evangelizing proposal and all the mechanisms implemented by the foundation of the Institute of the Daughters of the Divine Shepherdess (1885), a useful instrument that makes possible a better present and future for the students, and therefore, for everyone.
Every March 8, the memory of St. Faustino Míguez de la Encarnación, Piarist and Founder, calls for and remembers. It calls for more and better means for the education of all, while reminding us that humble instruments at the service of the greatest works are still necessary.
Happy Feast of St. Faustino
Angel Ayala Guijarro, Sch.P. Postulator General of the Pious Schools
