For years, the priest’s trade has been surrounded by questions and rumors. How is the life of a priest? How much does it really charge? Do they live accommodated? Gonzalo Portillo, one of the youngest priests in Spain and pastor in the church of Santiago el Mayor de Totana, Murcia, has not dodged any of those issues and has offered a look from within this full -time vocation, without schedules and with economic limitations.
He priest Murciano participated in an interview in which he addressed without tapujos such diverse issues as masturbation, homosexuality and position of the church towards the LGTBI community, in addition to hell, the Eucharist and life after death. And when the conversation derived to the economic field, this priest did not hesitate to respond.
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Portillo is clear: “I have no carnal children, but a parish, yes spiritual children and I know there are people in need,” he explains, “I have always been instilled from the seminar that we do not live for ourselves.” Thus summarizes the key to your day to day: deliver life to others, also in the material.
“The salary is minimal”
The issue of money inevitably appears in the conversation: “The salary is minimal.” Portillo ensures that his payroll is below the Minimum interprofessional salary: “Less than 1,100 euros. Less than the minimum wage,” he insists. The money that enters every month, although it allows you to have “a freedom” is not intended to polish it or for personal enjoyment. “Yes, you can give yourself a whim, a dinner at a given time, but you don’t live for that. You live to deliver,” he explains.
Material conditions make this small salary easy to cope with. “We live in the parish. The house is not ours, it is from the parish. We do not pay light or water, and we have no children to take care of,” he says. Therefore, without rent or invoices, the essential is covered.
However, leave the doubt about how much you win if it rises in the Ecclesiastical hierarchy: “I have no idea what a bishop earns,” admits Portillo. Although it does recognize that the priests that attend several villages receive a small plus “for gasoline” and that those who teach in the seminar also perceive a complement, although “very little significant.”
Felt the call since childhood
Portillo remembers that he began to feel the vocation being just a child at school. “I was a zagal at school when I began to feel that God called me,” he says. In adolescence he tried to park that concern, but finally decided to enter the minor seminar while studying baccalaureate.
Then he went to the major seminar, where he prepared for years. First two years of philosophy, then four of theology and a last course of pastoral practices. In total, seven years of training before their ordination. “To be a cure, the first thing is to have a vocation, that is fundamental,” he explains.