After 35 years of episcopal life
This year will possibly be the last Holy Week presided over by the Bishop of Pereira, Monsignor Rigoberto Corredor Bermúdez, who will resign from his post in August upon reaching the age of forced retirement.
By: Oscar Osorio Ospina
On a day like today, exactly on March 26, 1988, the Pereiran priest Rigoberto Corredor Bermúdez, who was 39 years old at the time, was ordained Bishop and appointed Auxiliary of the Diocese of Pereira alongside Monsignor Darío Castrillón.
Throughout these 35 years of episcopal life, Monsignor Corredor Bermúdez -born in the village of Arabia- has served in the Diocese of Pereira, Buenaventura, Garzón (Huila) and returned to Pereira in 2011 this time as titular Bishop. He is now preparing to preside over the Holy Week ceremonies with the obvious possibility that it will be the last time he does so, since on August 5, when he turns 75, he will resign upon reaching the mandatory retirement age. . “It will be like taking a piano off my shoulders”, the prelate assures and explains that each year of exercise as Bishop is equivalent to two years of priestly performance since it is a very hard and demanding exercise, but despite this he affirms that “I have spent happy”.
We talked with the Bishop of Pereira about his episcopal journey that began in his homeland in 1988: “I was Auxiliary Bishop in Pereira for nine years, that is, I did everything here: I repeated primary school and high school with Monsignor Darío Castrillón and with Monsignor Fabio Suescún, I learned a lot from both of them, two great characters, the one, a universal man like Monsignor Castrillón, with a great vision of the world and Monsignor Suescún, a man of great execution and pastoral vision”. As Auxiliary Bishop, he visited all the parishes of the Diocese, even spending the night there, including those located in the indigenous zone of Risaralda, as is the case of Purembará.
In 1996 he was appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Buenaventura, a position that was not easy for him to exercise as a priest given the socioeconomic and security conditions that this city on the Pacific coast experienced.
“Buenaventura is like a unit of many important things like a port and many difficult things like violent groups and situations that are intermingled in the city. The people are great, I felt very well treated by Afro-descendants, I spent seven years there in Buenaventura, learning about all the problems of the port and the Pacific coast, delving into the soul of Afro-descendants, of the Colombians who live there and I got on very well with the Chamber of Commerce, with the port, with the Community Councils of Negritudes”.
Monsignor Corredor Bermúdez emphasizes that despite these conditions he visited all the communities in the different sectors of Buenaventura, although on occasions he had to ask permission from certain forces to carry out his pastoral work in those remote places.
“What marked me the most was visiting the communities of the Naya, Cajambre, Yurumanguí and Raposo rivers with subversion tolls, where they told me I could pass. I always found guerrilla groups and some paramilitary groups. Over there where the Deputies of the Valle Assembly died, I was staying in the part of La Concepción by the Naya River. The most impressive thing was seeing that country in that way”, the Bishop assured.
From the port on the Pacific, Monsignor Corredor Bermúdez arrived in Garzón (Huila) in 2004 where he stayed until 2011 and on October 1 of that year he returned to Pereira.
Throughout his episcopal life, he has ordained two Bishops, as well as many priests and deacons. Among the prelates, the current Bishop of Buenaventura, Monsignor Rubén Darío Jaramillo and the Bishop of Barrancabermeja, Monsignor Ovidio Giraldo Velásquez. “It is something that impacts when one makes another Bishop or Priest, it is a reality that one says that the episcopate is prolonged in a successor of the apostles to strengthen the church.”
Regarding his time of retirement, Monsignor Corredor Bermúdez points out that he must resign before next August 5, in compliance with the mandates set forth in the Code of Canon Law that says that the Bishop who reaches 75 years of age must do so before the Holy Father and wait for their decision, which can be immediate or take one or two years.
“I say that my retirement is fair and necessary (laughs). It is already a deserved break because it really is a very big load. There are some Bishops who tell a very special joke: that the Bishop was one of the great joys he has when ordaining, when preaching, when finding humble people with so much faith, when ordaining a Bishop, a Priest and when rendering a service as great as In Buenaventura and Garzón, there are three very important days in his life: the first, the surprise when someone is called to tell him: the Pope has named him Bishop; the second, a certain joy of the family and of the people when they ordain one Bishop; the third, which is the happiest day: the day when one’s resignation is accepted (laughs), one rests there”.
Despite this, the Bishop acknowledges that he will need pastoral action, but he already has a letter in hand to compensate for this nostalgia: “I will try to go to a parish to collaborate, I will try to read and write, I want to recounting all those experiences of Buenaventura, especially those journeys through the rivers, writing a little about everything that really happened to me, the encounter with these people, the dialogue with them. In the pastoral part, seeing everything they thought, the burden of deaths and such things. I want to have a little lucid mind to write, help some parishes, but I also feel that one gets rid of the piano that one is carrying, as it is to carry an entire Diocese”.
The priestly life of the Bishop
Monsignor Rigoberto Corredor Bermúdez was born in the corregimiento of Arabia, in the home of Lisandro Corredor, the meat vendor of the corregimiento. He did his first years of primary school at the Atanasio Girardot school and then went to Marco Fidel Suarez in the Corocito neighborhood near the parish of La Trinidad. There he was part of an apostolic group called The Eucharistic Crusade where he became interested in the priesthood. Back in Arabia, the parish priest asked him to be an acolyte and from there the desire to be a priest was born. At the end of primary school, he entered the Minor Seminary to advance his baccalaureate and in the Major Seminary he had basic orientation with all the priests, being ordained as such on November 18, 1973 in Arabia, in a ceremony presided over by the Bishop of Pereira, Monsignor Baltasar. Alvarez Restrepo.