JOSÉ-LUIS CARREÑO ETXEANDÍA, SDB (1905-1986): A SKETCH

Ivo Coelho, SDB

José-Luis Carreño Etxeandía (1905-1986) has been described as “the most loved Salesian in South India” of the first part of the twentieth century.¹ Carreño lived in India, Goa (when it was a Portuguese colony), the Philippines and Spain, and in all these countries we still find Salesians who treasure their memories of him. The closest thing we have to a biography is José Luis Carreño Etxeandía Obrero de Dios, the substantial mortuary letter written by José Antonio Rico.² “I hope someone will soon write a good biography of this exceptional Salesian,” Rico says at the end his letter. More than 30 years later, that wish has not yet been fulfilled. Hopefully it will soon be.³

José-Luis Carreño Etxeandía was born in Bilbao, Spain, on 23 October 1905, to Rogelio Carreño and Teresa Etxeandía. The Spain of 1905 was a constitutional monarchy, Basque nationalism had just emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the Basque Nationalist Party had been founded in 1895.

José-Luis was baptized on 28 October 1905 in the parish church of San Antón Abad. He was to conserve a deep appreciation for the sacrament of baptism: “Coming to life is the first sign of the love of God. He wants that we exist. And hopes that we will love him in return. But the real moment of life is that of our Baptism.”⁴

Rogelio and Teresa were also blessed with three daughters, Itziar, Mari-Teresa and Garbiñe.⁵ Itziar, who is the one José-Luis mentions most often in his last autobiographical writings,⁶ married the famous Basque artist and sculptor Jorge de Oteiza Embil (1908-2003), and eventually, at her brother’s invitation, settled down with her husband in Alzuza.⁷

When aita (father) Rogelio Carreño went to Buenos Aires in the hope of being able to better support his children,⁸ the family left Bilbao and moved to the ancestral house in Villaro “under the Gorbea” mountain.⁹ There were now three families under the roof of the caserón de Chichirri with 13 cousins and a total of 17 members.¹⁰ The household was presided by grandmother Pascuala Iruarrízaga, who José-Luis remembers with much affection. Pascuala was what the Book of Proverbs calls ESCHET KHAIL, woman of valour – mulierem fortem quis inveniet? (Prov 31:10) – the very incarnation of a Basque matriarch, a simple woman who reigned over her large household with undisputed authority and calm dignity, unruffled serenity and immense goodness.¹¹

The boy was close to his amatxu (mother), who taught him to read (“I could already read at the age of four,” he recalls¹²) and initiated him into the faith and to a special love for the Eucharistic Lord. "One morning", he recalls in one of his books, "my mother took me to Mass. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘in a little while the priest will raise a little round white thing. That’s Jesus!’ Sure enough, shortly after, there was the sound of a small bell and in the semi-darkness a small round object began to rise slowly in the hands of the priest. I must have given a sharp cry because I immediately felt a soft hand covering my mouth. That round object was forever engraved on my soul. It was the ‘personal revelation’ of the mystery of transubstantiation."¹³ “When the Eucharistic embrace comes very early in life, the soul is marked by it forever,” Carreño adds.¹⁴

But tragedy was around the corner. José-Luis’ beloved amatxu was sick, and the doctors decided to send her to Urquiola where the climate was better. She never came back. “One month later, my mother, who had prepared me to receive Jesus, winged her flight to Heaven.”¹⁵ It was the year 1913 and José-Luis was 8 years old. Towards the end of his life, writing his memoirs at the insistent request of friends, the memory of that loss is still fresh: “For at least ten days I felt the impact of that terrible orphaning. Sitting on the wide landing at the top of the staircase, I wept and kept repeating: ‘Why did you go away, amatxu?’¹⁶

With amatxu dead and aita in faraway Argentina, José-Luis found comfort and consolation in grandmother Pascuala. From her he received not only the affection he needed but also a love for the Basque language – seeing that his mother did not speak Euzkera.¹⁷ It was a love soaked in Salesian moderation, as this memory of the sad time after his mother’s death reveals:

When grandmother Pascuala would see me more depressed and sad than usual she would call me, make me lay my head at her feet, take off my socks, warm me up by rubbing my cold and damp feet, lulling me to sleep with the sweetness of her ancient Euzkera words:

“Ené, Josetxu! Biotxa! Lastán ederra!"

"Kuitádua! Be otxa!"

until my head would sink into the oasis of dream and forgetfulness.

I have always felt that the Basque language was made for the balm of tenderness. Never for shouting "Errebolúzisa, Erreconbérsisa" ...¹⁸

And with a love of the language, there was also an intense love of the land:

O valleys of Vizcaya! I have seen the Great Canyon Valley of Colorado and the paradisiacal valleys of the slopes of the Himalayas and of the Andes, but I have never found anything like your beauty.

Hardly did one leave the Capital of Iron [Bilbao], an imposing armada of majestic, white cloud-ships appeared, ploughing through the pure blue of the infinite skies.

There [in Bilbao] they had spoken to me about God.

Here it was God who was speaking to us.

Singing brooks playing with pebbles and rolling down their beds. Meadows of intense greenery, covered with orchards. On one side, mountains crumbling into fronds of water falling towards the wide valley. On the other side blinding whiteness, like colossal ivories. The singing of the birds. Cows grazing meekly (ding dong) on the juicy carpet of the meadows. Sheep bleating. The joy of thousands and thousands of little brooks teeming with fish. Little streams bursting with crabs.

Is there anything in creation more beautiful than these valleys of ours?¹⁹

Practical woman that she was, grandmother Pascuala decided to put the motherless boy into a boarding school run by religious. She first tried the Jesuits in Durango and when that failed, she turned to the Salesians at Baracaldo, which was at that time their only foundation in the Basque country. Here she had better luck. Years later, when asked by an Indian archbishop how he had not fallen under the spell of the Jesuits, coming as he did from the place of Ignatius of Loyola, this is what Carreño replies:

‘Truly, Your Grace, the reason is very simple. In 1913, my saintly mother passed away. My father was at that time in Argentina, trying to find the means for the sustenance of his children. And when my mother left for heaven, my grandmother Pasquala, a valiant woman, decided to put me in a hostel….

‘In those years, St Ignatius was the big name in the Basque country, especially in the field of education. Where else would that brave woman have knocked, if not at the gates of a Jesuit boarding school? I do not know what happened inside. I only remember her coming out shaking her venerable head. There was no need for her to tell me: with the money aitatxu (dad) was sending, that hostel was beyond our means.

But some time later, I remember it as if it were yesterday, I saw her in friendly conversation with a fatherly figure, round and smiling. It was Fr Ramón Zabalo. I saw that they were discussing about the boy’s admission. I saw her taking out of her pouch a heap of silvery, shining coins and putting them on the table, and I saw how Fr Ramón convinced her to put them back into the pouch. About the details of the conversation I know nothing; only that, a few days later, I found myself in the boarding school of Alta Santander.

‘Your Grace, from that time onwards, from 1913, I have been eating Don Bosco’s bread.’²⁰

At this point a Jesuit bishop intervened: “And it would seem, from what you have been saying, that you are not at all sorry about it.” Carreño continues:

‘The thing is that there is something more to add to my story, Your Lordship,’ I said. ‘Being with Don Bosco, I can dedicate myself to the work that is dearest to the heart of God: doing good to his poorest and most abandoned ones. Today, for example, I have to find rice for hundreds, or better, for thousands, of mouths with good appetites. And this is something more enjoyable than writing the minutes of some convention. There are other Orders that keep you studying books all your life…. Are books really worth all that effort? All the good things they say we will know one day in the Essence of God. Don Bosco, instead, throws us into the midst of work for the needy, something that won’t be needed in heaven. And this is what happened, Your Lordship, that when my good friend, Fr Varin, SJ, the holy Administrator of your Universidad de Loyola, did not know where to put the orphans of his gardener who had just died, he brought them to me who, thank God, knew where to put them.’ …

For a little boy who had just lost his mother in October, it was small consolation to be locked up in a distant boarding school. And I spent days crying in the dark corner of the landing under the staircase of that mansion at Villaro, crying to my amatxu (mum) who was no more: “Why did you go? Why did you go?”

Only much later does one become aware of the great and merciful plans of God. I had not entered into one more a boarding school. I had crossed the threshold of a beautiful, great, wonderfully cheerful family that would be mine forever.²¹