–
Juan Galiana Amorós dies at 98 in Elche, who He was parish priest for 42 years of the church of San José and one of the members of the Worker Brotherhood of Catholic Action (HOAC). The historian Miguel Ors has recalled his career through the Pedro Ibarra Chair, expressing that he was a person “very relevant in the recent history of Elche.”
This priest was born in Hondón de los Frailes although At age 10 he came with his family to live in Elche. He was an only child and “his father worked in the Ripoll factory until his retirement and around 1934 he began working in a workshop and collecting grenades for some uncles who owned an inn. During the Civil War he continued to work in a factory with a machine. to sew slippers “, point out from the Chair.
In 1941, At the age of 18, he made the decision to start his priestly vocation and went to the Seminary of San Miguel in Orihuela, along with eleven other young people from Elche, of whom six completed their studies and became priests (Ginés Román, Antonio Poveda Maciá, Miguel Agulló Quiles, Manuel Vicente LLinares, Iván Juan Santos Mollá and Juan Galiana himself) and another five did. they left (José María Gras Maciá, Vicente Peral, Alfonso Lag and Pascual Pomares).
In one of his interviews, he expressed that his memory of the Seminar and of his career as a whole is always very optimistic: “Life has treated me very well.”
On March 30, 1952, he was ordained a priest and sang his first mass in Santa María on April 2 of that same year. His first assignment was that of curate in Elda for two years and three months. “Remember that when José García Goldaraz from San Sebastian was a bishop, a priest came with him, Jesús Aldanondo, vicar of El Salvador de Elche in 1950 or 1951, who was the one who created the HOAC in the city, they point out from the Chair.
Appointment
Being bishop of Orihuela Pablo Barrachina y Estevan was appointed parish priest of San José and chaplain of pastoral workers (HOAC, JOC and JOFAC) in January 1955. His predecessor, Antonio Rodríguez had been coadjutor of the parish of El Salvador and a newly created parish priest from San jose. As stated in an interview with José Antonio Carrasco Pacheco and Miguel Ors Montenegro in the San José Asylum, where he had resided since the age of 90, “the San José neighborhood received the new parish priest by nails for the work of his predecessor, who had down the street to the Virgin of Fátima and who made raffles so well rigged that the person most in need ended up winning. His memory is that of a kind of uprising with farewell banners and accusations to the new priest of not wanting to celebrate the feast of San Pascual He had a bad time, although it did not take long to get hold of his parishioners, with whom he shared his work for no less than 42 years to the point that the parish of San José will always be inextricably linked to that of the priest Juan Galiana. ”
– .
