By Rocio Granados - La Voz Catolica

MIAMI | Father Julio Estada, a Spanish-born priest who arrived in South Florida in 1980 after spending 20 years in Colombia, died June 6, 2024, in Miami.

“He was an angel in our lives,” is how Mariela Fierro described Father Estada.

Fierro met the priest when “no parish wanted to marry us because we didn't belong to one, and we weren't registered for more than six months.” At the time, she and her fiancé had been in the country only for a few months after arriving from her native Peru, and they had already searched several parishes in the Coconut Creek area of Broward.

While talking on a payphone, a person overheard them and said, “Go visit Father Julio Estada” at St. Andrew Parish in Coral Springs. After listening to them, Father Estada asked, “When do you want to get married?” And then he said, “No one here is going to be denied a sacrament,” Fierro recalled.

“He himself enrolled us in the Camino retreat (for couples who wish to marry in the Catholic Church)” and asked for baptismal certificates from their parishes in Peru. He married them four months later, Dec. 11, 1993. After the wedding, he involved them in the baptismal ministry, where they helped for two years.

It was the pattern under which Father Estada fostered the formation of ministries at St. Andrew Parish, where he served as associate pastor for six years. “Especially the Hispanic ministries,” said Fierro.

Something similar happened with Zoraida Perez and her husband. After a Mass at St. Andrew’s, the couple introduced themselves to Father Estada and asked him if they could join the parish's young adult group. “He looked at me and said, ‘We don't have one, but we already have someone to start it,’” recalled Perez, now principal of St. Malachy School in Tamarac.

The Perezes had just arrived from their native Puerto Rico and were newlyweds who knew no one. At Mass the following week, Father Estada asked for others to join, and so began the Friendship Committee (Comité de la amistad), a ministry which has been like a family to its members and has remained active for 29 years. Other ministries created at that time were Defense of the Faith, Youth Ministry, Marriage Ministry, among many others.

 Grew the Hispanic community

“Father made the Hispanic community not only grow in numbers but also in the practice of the faith. Father Julio was a very important pillar for us Hispanics at St. Andrew,” Perez said.

“He filled St. Andrew's church, and he brought Anglos and Hispanics together,” said Gregorio Colón. His wife, Luz Colón, said Father Estada established two Masses in Spanish, one on Saturday afternoons and another on Sundays at 1 p.m.

He united the Hispanic community with the Anglo community through the Stations of the Cross, which was initially organized by the Hispanics in Spanish and then “became bilingual,” said Luz.

Father Estada “was a father to me,” said Gregorio. In the most difficult moments of his life, when “I was dying, Father Julio was a huge comfort.”

“He never said no. He would always say let's work it out. He was a special priest, very simple, very humble and very funny,” Fierro recalled.

After leaving St. Andrew’s in 1996 to serve at St. John Bosco in Miami, he returned from time to time to visit the ministries he had helped form."Father Julio left an indelible mark on our hearts. We will never forget him,” Fierro added.

Father Estada “was a very even-tempered person. His homilies were to the point,” said Deacon Emilio Blanco of St. Benedict Parish in Hialeah, where Father Estada celebrated Spanish Masses. Deacon Blanco first met Father Estada in the 1980s, when the priest was an associate pastor.

Eva Diaz Rubio, a volunteer and parishioner at St. Benedict's, said Father Estada “was community. Father Estada was amazing, bringing parishioners together. He was a very enthusiastic priest. He would always ask what new family there was and bring them up to the altar and there would be applause.”

“I always saw him as a joyful, enthusiastic, and very pious priest,” said Father Carlos Cabrera, chaplain at Mercy Hospital in Miami, where Father Estada helped for many years.

“He was always a very lively person, with a lot of joy for his ministry, and he loved working here at Mercy. He loved it so much, in fact, that it was difficult to convince him to retire and rest,” Father Cabrera said.

After the pandemic, he could no longer return. “We are very sorry to see him go. He will be missed,” the priest added.

 

Missionary priest

Father Estada was born Aug. 26, 1932, in Madrid, Spain. He was ordained May 17, 1959, for the Archdiocese of Madrid-Alcalá. He joined OCSHA (Obra de Cooperación Sacerdotal Hispano-Americana), through which Spanish priests were sent as missionaries to Latin America and worked in Colombia from 1959 to 1980. He taught at the collegiate and university levels and served as a hospital chaplain, in urban and rural parishes, and as pastor of San Lorenzo in Bogotá from 1971 to 1980.

That same year he came to South Florida and served as parochial vicar of St. Benedict Church in Hialeah (1980-90); St. Andrew in Coral Springs (1990-96); and St. John Bosco (1996-99) until his retirement from fulltime ministry.

He also helped at St. Matthew Parish, Hallandale Beach, and Mercy Hospital. 

“I know he was going to be 92 years old, but I can't accept that he is gone,” said María del Carmen Estada-Di Boscio, Father Estada's niece. He had planned to travel to Spain in May to visit his sister and nieces, but at the end of February, he fell and broke the last bone in his spine, causing him severe pain.

After leaving the hospital, he returned home where he received palliative care. His health deteriorated until the night of Wednesday, June 5, he was admitted to Aventura Hospital and diagnosed with pneumonia. He died a few hours later, at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday.

“My uncle, besides being my dad's brother, was my godfather. He baptized me when he was already a priest,” said Estada-Di Boscio. He also married her in Venezuela when he lived in Colombia.

“He was a very cheerful person, very positive, with a great zest for life, and a great desire to spend time with his parishioners. Wherever he went, we had to wait until everyone had finished greeting him,” said Estada-Di Boscio.

Her uncle helped many people, “and even after his death he is helping (economically) a family in Colombia,” said his niece – the family that helped him when he arrived in Colombia after leaving the seminary in Spain.

“Now it's my turn. We are going to send what we can to that family, on behalf of my uncle,” his niece said.

In addition to his niece, Father Estada is survived by his sister, Carmen, and nieces who live in Malaga, Spain.

FUNERAL SERVICES

• The viewing is set for Tuesday, June 18, 6-9 p.m. at Landmark Funeral Home, 4200 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood.
• The funeral Mass will be celebrated by Archbishop Thomas Wenski, Wednesday, June 19, 2024, at 10 a.m., at St. Matthew Parish, 542 Blue Heron Drive, Hallandale Beach. Burial will follow at Our Lady Queen of Heaven Cemetery, 1500 South State Road 7, North Lauderdale.