CHILE, Carmen Rogers/mkf. A brief news item, published at 11:15 A.M., can be read on the government page of Chile: “The President of the Republic receives two new chaplains of La Moneda: Alfred Cooper, Evangelical, and Luis Ramírez, Catholic.” The one who entered this morning into the Palace of La Moneda – headquarters for the President of the Republic of Chile – is Father Luis Ramírez, Provincial Superior of the Schoenstatt Fathers in Chile. He is 73, and is at the present time part of the leadership for the Monte Tabor, San José de Chicureo and Pablo Apóstol Schools.
An hour earlier, the newspaper “El Mercurio” announced the naming of Father Luis Ramírez Vial, and immediately, members of the Schoenstatt Family in Santiago de Chile – very proud of Fr. Lucho’s nomination – began to circulate the news.
According to “El Mercurio,” the recommendation “for naming him as priest of the Palace came from close ties: it was his friend and adviser, Gonzalo Mardones, who commented to Piñera that the Schoenstatt Father was an ideal person for the commission. Mardones, an architect, constructed the chapel of the seminary of said Movement in Lo Cañas in 1998, and was the direct bond between the president and the new chaplain” who also has personal bonds with the cabinet since some of the cabinet members are Schoenstatters.
Congratulations, Fr. Lucho!
