Fr Juan José Arrieta, LC (left), Fr Jesús Villagrasa, LC (right)

Rome, Italy. January 31, 2011. As announced last November, Cardinal Velasio De Paolis has decided to temporarily expand the general council that assists Fr Álvaro Corcuera, LC, in the governance of the congregation. To choose the two new councilors (who will join the current four), the papal delegate asked all priests and religious with perpetual vows and the religious who have made their first renewal of vows to send in their proposals. Afterwards, Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, with the help of his four personal councilors, selected two of the fifteen priests who received the most votes to make a valuable contribution by serving as general councilors in the congregation’s current situation. Fr Juan José Arrieta, LC, and Fr Jesús Villagrasa, LC, were thus chosen.

Fr Juan José Arrieta, LC, was born on August 19, 1956 in Baracaldo, Vizcaya (Spain). He joined the congregation on April 10, 1973 and made his religious profession on September 29, 1975. He was ordained to the priesthood on August 15, 1983. Since then he has held a series of responsibilities in the congregation’s Center for Higher Studies and in the apostolate in Rome, where he served as the local coordinator of apostolate and Regnum Christi section director, among other roles. Since 2007, he has been a pastor at the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Philip the Martyr in Rome.

Fr Jesús Villagrasa, LC, was born in Zaragoza, Spain on April 5, 1963. He joined the Legion of Christ on September 15, 1981 and made his religious profession on September 24, 1983. He was ordained to the priesthood on November 25, 1994. Since 1999, he has served as a metaphysics professor in the Philosophy Department of the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum College. In addition to his many activities in the academic field, he is a confessor and spiritual director at the Center for Higher Studies in Rome.

We ask our readers to pray with us for the work of these new general councilors for the congregation of the Legionaries of Christ.