In Pace Christi

Fr. Gerardo was born in Mexico City on 21 January 1957 to a family of four children in which he had received profound testimony of Christian life. In 1975, he entered the postulancy at Xochimilco and two years later went on to the novitiate at Cuernavaca where, on 21 April 1979, he made his first profession. He was then sent to the scholasticate of Innsbruck, in Austria, to continue his theology but experienced there certain difficulties in adapting and so his superiors sent him to Rome where he finished his formation and made his perpetual profession on 10 June 1983. He then returned to Mexico and was ordained priest in Mexico City on 3 December of the same year.

Fr. Gerardo was a good and generous person but he always found missionary life difficult due to his poor health and his life of illness and suffering. From 1984 to 1989, he stayed in Mexico City and took a degree in communication sciences: for a period, he was editor of Aguiluchos magazine.

In 1989, he was appointed to Mozambique which was then in the throes of a situation of war and violence for which Fr. Gerardo was not prepared. In addition, he was also ill and had to return to Mexico. In 1994, after the renewal Course in Rome, he was again appointed to the mission and sent to Costa Rica but soon afterwards asked to return to Mexico and be incardinated in the Archdiocese of Mexico City where he worked for some years. In 2004, he returned to community and was appointed to pastoral work in Lower California.

In 2005, he again tried going to the mission and was assigned to Colombia. He stayed in Bogota for a while and was then sent to Medellín where he also had some difficulty and returned to Mexico City where he stayed in the provincial house where he received personal accompaniment and worked as procurator.

Since 2013, he had been in the community of Montezuma as bursar and helping in other services such as receiving confreres passing through. At the same time, he assisted spiritually some groups of laypeople to which he provided formation.

In recent years, he had to have an operation on his spine and also suffered from pneumonia. At the beginning of November he experienced some difficulty in breathing and was taken to hospital where he became infected with covid-19 from which he suffered for six weeks and which caused his death on 17 December 2020.