Father José Mara Avendao Perea has been named the auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Getafe by Pope Francis. His mother, Jorja Perea, who passed away in 2015, is now being canonized.
During a news conference arranged to announce his appointment, the priest remarked, “A mother is always attentive to her children and my mother must have interceded.”
A native of Villanueva de Alcardete in the Spanish province of Toledo, Avendao has served as the vicar general and vicar for clergy of the Diocese of Getafe since the diocese’s establishment in 1991.
In 1987, he received his ordination as a priest for the Madrid Archdiocese. He has done a significant amount of his pastoral work in the city of Leganés, where he served as archpriest, since the establishment of the diocese where he would serve as an auxiliary bishop.
He has served as the general council of Caritas Spain’s bishops’ counselor since 2018.
The Archdiocese of Toledo launched the diocesan phase of his mother’s case for beatification on July 21. She “didn’t know how to read, but she knew the Gospel,” according to Avendao himself.
The Church is researching Jorja Perea’s potential role as an intercessor in certain instances of unexplained medical recoveries.
She married Cándido Avendao at the age of 25 after being orphaned as a young child and being born in 1928. The couple have five kids together.
The Diocese of Getafe issued holy cards for private devotion, noting that “the Holy Spirit left simplicity and humility on her spirit” and that “the ill, hungry, and impoverished always found compassion and mercy in her heart.”
“Caritas et humilitas” was selected by Avendao as the episcopal motto, perhaps for this reason as well as for inspiration from Blessed John Paul I’s papal motto (charity and humility).
On November 26, the Sacred Heart Basilica of Cerro de los Angeles will host the episcopal consecration.