I am a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature. I would like to relate how I met Pedro and how his life changed mine.
In 2015 I was living in Cavabianca, when Pedro visited Rome to meet Pope Francis, I had heard about Pedro because we received news about his health from people who knew him. I remember that afternoon when he visited Cavabianca. Pedro waved at me when he saw me. It was funny because I felt as if Pedro was another guy resident in Cavabianca and I was just a visitor. I said hello too and I was amazed because of his smile.
I returned to Lima in November 2018. Last year I read Pedro’s biography and I watched the documentary on Youtube. It was clear to me that Pedro was a saint of the ordinary life, so I decided that I had to ask him for some favours. In fact, I printed his prayer card for the chapel of the Lima campus of the University of Piura, where I work as a chaplain and lecturer.
On 7 September, a month ago, I was riding my scooter back home having celebrated the Holy Mass in a centre of the Opus Dei. The street was clear and I was going at 30 kph. Unfortunately I didn’t see a pothole in the road. It was definitely a new one because that’s my way home almost every morning. I fell and broke my wrist: a comminuted fracture of the distal radius (three pieces), is what the doctor said to me after I was driven to the hospital.
The doctor told me that that was the worst fracture for a wrist, the articulation of the left hand might be damaged. He also told us that we had 3 scenarios for the surgery: each one was worse than the next: specifically the number 2 and number 3. The surgery was scheduled for the next day, so I asked someone to bring me some T-shirts and Pedro’s prayer card from my bedroom. They put the prayer card next to the TV. I asked Pedro to help me: I didn’t want to be in the scenarios 2 or 3 because that meant having more surgeries. I was not nervous because I knew Pedro was there. And also because that smile of his, which I used to look at, was really helpful.
In fact, the surgery went well, better than expected, the doctor said; they just needed to put an internal pin and nothing else. They found that one important tendon was damaged, and they were able to fix it. Now I’m going to a therapist in order to recover all the movements of my hand.
That’s my story.
Fr Ricardo (Lima, Peru)
8 October 2023

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