Carlos Manuel Cecilio Rodríguez Santiago

          Blessed Carlos Manuel Cecilio Rodríguez Santiago – known in Puerto Rico as “Blessed Charlie” – is the first Caribbean-born person (and only the second layperson from the Western Hemisphere) to be beatified. Born on November 22, 1918, Carlos was the second of five children. Carlos was baptized at the Sweet Name of Jesus Church in Caguas (now the cathedral for the area) on May 4, 1919. Both his parents (Manuel Baudilio Rodríguez and Herminia Santiago) came from large, devout families and raised one of their own. Two of Carlos’ three sisters married, and the other became a Carmelite nun. Carlos’ brother was a Benedictine monk and the first Puerto Rican to be an abbot.          

          When Carlos was 6 years old, a fire destroyed the family home and his father’s store. They lost most of their material possessions and had to move into the house of Carlos’ grandmother, Alejandrina. She was a devout woman and, along with his parents, deeply influenced Carlos. His father showed grace throughout the ordeal. His mother’s daily devotion to the Eucharist shaped at a young age Carlos’ love of liturgy, which grew through his service as an altar boy.

          His second school in the faith was through his formal education and encounters with the Sisters of Notre Dame and the Redemptorist Fathers.  Carlos studied at the Colegio Católico Notre Dame, then enrolled in Gautier Benítez High School.  Later he transferred to the Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  Carlos was a very good student, but developed ulcerative colitis, a condition that would plague him the rest of his life and disrupt his education.  Carlos had to leave the Academy before graduating.  He returned home and took a job working as an office clerk.  He found a way, while working, to obtain his high school diploma.  In 1946, he enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico, but had to stop his studies his sophomore year due to his health.  

          Carlos’ love for learning and desire to bring Christ into the university environment continued after he had to end his college studies.  Carlos loved the Eucharist and the liturgy.  In Carlos’ day, the liturgy was celebrated in Latin and many did not know the meaning of the liturgical celebrations as well as they should.  Carlos formed discussion groups for young people and published magazines (using the money he earned as an office clerk) to help people grow in their appreciation for the liturgy and to recognize it as a place of encounter with Christ.  He translated many of the liturgical texts from Latin into Spanish.  He taught Catechism to high school students, buying with his own money any needed teaching supplies. As more people joined his “Liturgy Circles”, Carlos moved closer to the university.  He also worked to help priests and bishops renew their love for the liturgy.  For Carlos, the liturgy is life of the Church and he was eager for others to experience and be transformed by that.  One of Carlos’ great desires was to see the Easter Vigil restored to prominence as the focal point of the Christian year, which Pope Pius XII did in 1952.  Carlos was fond of saying, as Christians, “We live for that night,” the resurrection of the Lord.  “Easter night could become the peak religious experience for both the clergy and the faithful; if both one and the other understood it, appreciated it and celebrated it properly.”

          In 1963, Carlos had a life-saving surgery, but it revealed that he had advanced terminal rectal cancer. By July, the end was near, and on July 13, 1963, Carlos passed into eternal life, something he predicted a few days earlier. Carlos had lived a simple life, one not focused on possessions or money, but instead was rooted in the joy of the risen Lord. Carlos was beatified in just 9 years, with the approval of a miraculous cure from non-Hodgkin’s malignant lymphoma of a mother who knew Carlos in college.

          Of all those on American Saints and Causes, Blessed Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago would be a great patron saint of the liturgy. Carlos was originally buried in Cementerio Borinquen Memorial Park, but appears now to be entombed in a side altar of the Dulce Nombre de Jesús Cathedral in Caugus, Puerto Rico. The cathedral also houses a small museum with several relics – pants, crucifix, shoes, bible, and Paschal candle – of Blessed Charlie. Additionally, Casa Rosada Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, or the “Pink House”, operates as a museum dedicated to Blessed Carlos’ life. The location used to be one of the homes at which he lived. The local tourism board has assembled a Blessed Carlos Manuel Trail that marks other locations associated with his life.