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On October 23, 2005, nearly eight thousand Chileans stood cheering in St. Peter's Square as Pope Benedict XVI canonized their country's second saint. The Jesuit priest, whose rugged features smiled down at them from a tapestry on the basilica's façade, was "truly a contemplative in action," said the pope.
Many in that crowd could testify to the “in action” aspect of St. Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga. Some were homeless kids when they first met him; he plucked them off Santiago’s streets and gave them a new life in his Hogar de Cristo (“Christ’s Home”), now Chile’s largest charity. Indeed, fifty-four years after his death, virtually all of Chile remembers Hurtado as a man of prodigious activity—a social reformer, theologian, journalist, inspired preacher, union activist, youth leader, educator, and revered public figure.
And yet, this man of action was “truly a contemplative” whose actions were simply the outward expression of his intense relationship with Christ. “He lived in an act of love of God, which translated constantly into one or another act of love for his neighbor,” said a priest who knew him well. “His zeal overflowed, his heart was like…
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