Father Jose Berruete, S.D.B.

Father Jose Berruete, S.D.B., a former pastor of two parishes in the archdiocese who worked extensively with Spanish-speaking parishioners, died March 6 in a Salesian nursing home in Barcelona, Spain. He was 72. He served in Port Chester as pastor of Holy Rosary parish and director of the Salesian community, which serves Holy Rosary and Corpus Christi parishes, from 1991 to 1996. Both parishes serve large Hispanic communities. He worked with Spanish-speaking immigrants at Mary Help of Christians parish in Manhattan as pastor, 1980-1989, and as a parochial vicar, 1996-1999 and 1979-1980. For many years he was a member of the Hispanic ministry commission of the Salesians' New Rochelle Province. He had been a member of the province since 1952. Born in Navarra, Spain, he entered the Salesian novitiate in Tarragona in 1951. After professing first vows in 1952 he came to the United States, where he studied at Don Bosco College, Newton, N.J. He also studied at the Salesian College in Aptos, Calif., and in Barcelona, where he was ordained in 1962. He taught in Boston and ministered to the Hispanic community there, 1962-1979. He continued Hispanic ministry in Florida from 1999 until illness forced him to retire in 2002. A Funeral Mass was celebrated March 7 at Mary Help of Christians Church in Barcelona, with burial in a nearby Salesian cemetery.