Ricardo Joel Gómez Osnaya – Padre Ricardo as he is still called, even after his November election as bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Western Mexico – had not yet been born when his grandfather, a layman in Tlajomulco, a town just outside Guadalajara, was knifed to death by a zealous Cristero after leaving an Anglican Mass.
Padre Ricardo’s father had already been born, of course. Yet when he grew up, instead of shying away from Anglicanism as a result of the traumatic killing as might be expected, he not only became an Anglican priest but encouraged another of his sons, Alfonso (Padre Ricardo’s older brother), to do the same.
“I’m a third generation Anglican,” Gómez noted in an interview last week. And, in addition to the faith itself, he seems to have inherited another tendency from his forebears – doing the unexpected.
Gómez, now 48 years old, did not come to the Anglican ministry as a very young man (as his brother, Alfonso, did), although he took a stab at it. At the tender age of 18, he entered the seminary but soon left in order to finish his education as a conservation biologist at the University of Guadalajara.
In addition to loving biology, Gómez also yearned to be a musician, which he did in a big way, joining the well known University of Guadalajara folkloric group, Ensamble de México, and traveling with them for ten years, performing as a singer and guitarist in far flung countries such as Japan, India and Indonesia. But this success did not provide all the rewards he had anticipated.
“I was doing what I loved and earning good money and I thought I should be happy, but I wasn’t. My brother Alfonso told me the emptiness I felt could only be filled by God. So I started reading scripture again, and this time it seemed different.”
So, in 2000, at the age of 30, Gómez ended his relationship with Ensamble de México and returned home, where he soon entered – and resuscitated – the San Andres Anglican seminary (CETSA) in metropolitan Guadalajara.
“The seminary had been closed and I helped reopen it,” Gómez explained, adding that it currently has four local students and 12 in its extension program.
Five years later, in 2005, he was ordained a deacon and, five months later, a priest. The same year, he married his wife, Ericka, with whom he lives in Guadalajara, along with two of their three children.
As his rescue of the seminary attests (and his variegated background notwithstanding), Gómez comes to the ministry with the enthusiasm of someone with a lifetime steeped in devotion – as indeed, his life has been.
“From my childhood, I served in the church. I took pleasure in it. I have considered it a privilege, not a job,” he explains. Perhaps this enthusiasm was the reason he was selected as bishop on the first round of voting by a large majority.
Now Gómez seems on fire, although in a quiet and firm way, to make the Anglican Church an agent for much-needed change in Mexico.
“I want the diocese the be a missionary force in Mexico, to evangelize the kingdom of God, to develop it in a healthy, merciful, loving way. In these violent times, our Church has the very important mission of reconciliation. We have to take this on and involve everyone—clergy and lay people—to take strong leadership positions and make this society more loving, free and inclusive.
“One way to do this is respect diversity. We may not understand people and in Mexico that can mean that we lack love for them; we even lack love for ourselves. And we must carry out this love in actions, not just words, for example, by education and by creating groups that work with our government.
“In fact, the Church is in a position to do this,” he emphasized. “We are a key element for improving society.”
Not surprisingly, Gómez has expressed his affinity for missionary work by traveling to mountainous parts of Mexico and working with three small indigenous communities with a total population of about 140. He is also involved with an Anglican community of about 60 in Huentitán on the north edge of Guadalajara near the zoo, at a church named Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit).
As for his relations with the several English-speaking congregations in the diocese, Gómez has not been shy. He has visited Christ Church by the Sea in Puerto Vallarta and helped St. Mark’s in Guadalajara celebrate its 50th anniversary.
“He wrote a Christmas letter to all the churches,” notes Tim Welch of St. Andrew’s in Ajijic. “That demonstrates he’s communicative. He’s making a great effort to work with the English-speaking churches. His English is limited but he’s not afraid of English.
“In fact, I think he’ll change the face of the Anglican church in western Mexico. He’s enthusiastic, he’s young, he’s active; he’s in it to truly be a bishop and a leader.”
Gómez will work out of Guadalajara’s Anglican cathedral, St. Paul’s, in Colonia Seattle. His consecration as bishop takes place there, April 13.