Tenerife Lecture Notes

TENERIFE As far as the island of Tenerife is concerned, the archdiocese of La Laguna proposed the creation of four new parishes; one in La Esperanza, in the payment of the Rosary, another in Valle Guerra, the third in Las Mercedes and the last in Tacoronte, all, in the opinion of the dean, absolutely necessary, and so he stated to the bishop: ... In the case of parishes in La Esperanza or Rosary, the same as the other three previously mentioned are to be attended to, if the salvation of a great number of souls is to be attended to, if they have no more at hand, so to speak, the priest who administers the Holy Sacraments to them.2 The proposal was based on the case of the first, that a town with a town hall and a municipal judge that had approximately 3,000 people, should have a parish, since the distance that separated the last hamlet of El Rosario from the parish of Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de La Laguna, to whose ecclesiastical district it belonged, was three long leagues of very bad road. In the case of the second, Valle Guerra, it had a population of approximately 1,300 inhabitants, who had to travel very hard roads to take the children to be baptized, as well as the deceased to receive a Christian burial, a difficulty that was increased by the expenses that such transfers entailed, especially in the second case. The proposal to create a parish in Las Mercedes, to which would be added the parishioners from the mountains and fields as far as Afur and whose distance from the parish of the Tabernacle to which they belonged was three leagues, was based on the fact that most of this population was located in the midst of mountains and high peaks. The more than a thousand people who lived there were far away from their parish priest and could not fulfill their religious duties for most of the year, especially because of the difficult roads and rains. Finally, in Tacoronte the dean considered that the auxiliary church in which the Santo Cristo de los Dolores was located and to whom the whole island professed great devotion, could declare itself independent of the matrix of Santa Catalina more easily than the other three, since numerous alms entered the latter that would contribute to its maintenance. If the proposal is accepted, the aforementioned churches would be erected in the existing hermitages in the respective places, all of them equipped with the ornaments and equipment necessary for worship. For the ecclesiastical district of La Orotava, its archpriest, Manuel Picar y Santos, proposed, given the importance it had at that time, both in wealth and population, the payment of the Holy Cross in El Realejo Alto and that of the Perdoma in the town of La Orotava itself, the creation of a parish. Also among other proposals, he saw the need to provide the church of San Juan Bautista in that town with a coadjutor, as well as to carry out a series of reforms, both in the ecclesiastical demarcation of the matrix and for the benefit of that of San Juan, as well as in the endowments of the parishes of San Juan de la Rambla and Santa Úrsula. For his part, the dean, although he agreed with him in what he proposed, nevertheless also considered it necessary to create another in the payment of Icod el Alto. The study of the proposals of the archpriests of Icod and Daute, whose responsibility fell to the chanter, meant that, although he was in total agreement with the opinion of the archpriest that the parish of San Marcos de Icod should be classified as a municipality, nevertheless and in order not to increase the expenses on which they had been so insistent, He made him propose to keep it with the category of second promotion, while the auxiliary of St. Augustine would be erected as an independent parish from the outset, thus subtracting one of the coadjutors from the matrix of St. Mark, who would be the one who would alternately celebrate Mass on feast days in the most distant payments. With regard to that of Daute, which had eight parishes, he was of the opinion that none of them should be suppressed, since the only one that could perhaps be done because it was at a distance of about one kilometer from that of Santa Ana de Garachico, was that of San Pedro de Daute and it was not advisable, among other reasons, because it was the first to be founded as a result of the conquest in the long territory of the same name and had to be preserved as a traditional establishment, apart from the fact that with the sugar factory that had been installed and the abundant irrigation of its territory with the high springs of Garachico, which had recently been placed, an increase in population and wealth was very foreseeable, and finally, because of the great help that his parish priest could give as he was so close to Garachico, in the great solemnities of the church of that port, as well as in the convent of the nuns of the Immaculate Conception that existed there. Of the other parishes, he was of the opinion that only in the ecclesiastical demarcation of Guía, with a large congregation of 161 neighbors (553 inhabitants), another should be erected in the payment of Chío, to whose neighborhood would be added that of the hamlet of Alcalá located in the port of the same name, that of Chiguergue, and that of Chirche. With regard to the archpriesthood of Santa Cruz, the parish priest, archpriest and at the same time a member of the Board in charge of its study, was of the opinion that, given the importance of that capital and the growing increase of its parishioners, which already numbered 17,302 people between the churches of San Francisco and the main church, in addition to the 1,874 of San Andrés, At least one parish had to be created in the hermitage of El Pilar, taking into account the few resources available and the impossibility of supporting a greater number of priests than those in service, which were only two, when according to rule 19 of the royal decree of January 3, 1854, He had 14 coadjutors. The priest who attended her would depend on the parish priest of San Francisco and would help him, since he had in his jurisdiction many neighbors difficult to attend to because they were distributed among the fields, being able to cover the needs of the same, who would have a house in the church of El Pilar, with his income, alms from the mass and some obventions for his attendance at San Francisco. while to attend to the worship he would count on the product, although short, of the manda del Pilar and some alms from the faithful. As far as the parish of San Andrés was concerned, he considered the existence of a coadjutor to be of absolute necessity, since the parish priest was also in charge of the payment of Igueste, which was very difficult to access, both by land and by sea. For his part, the archpriest of the cathedral, in charge of the study of the archdiocese of Güimar, was in favour of increasing the number of parishes in the cathedral; one in the area of El Escobonal, which would encompass the parish of Mena and Asientos, with a total of 300 residents, and another in the hermitage of San Bartolomé in the Pago del Río, jurisdiction of the parish of Arico, to which would be added Las Vegas and Chimiche, very distant from the parish and also with more than 300 residents. both within the demarcation of Granadilla. He also proposed separating the settlements of Ichor and Altos, on the basis of the more than three leagues of distance that separated them from the parish of Arico, to whose demarcation they belonged, and adding them to that of Fasnia, from which they were only half a league distant. Proposals that he also made were, among others, to reduce the category of Vilaflor to a parish of entry, that of second promotion of Güímar to first, as well as to suppress the coadjutoría.