Religion: Brothers of the Dead

Guadix (pop. 26,000). on the sun-hammered Spanish plain of Andalusia, is a poor town in a poor land. Along the dusty path to the cemetery of Guadix one day last week, the relations of Paula Pilar Magan carried her body in its rough coffin.

Most Spanish graveyards are places of desolation and decay presided over by gravediggers so thieving and callous that relations often slash the clothes of the dead to keep their bodies from being stripped. At best, the family of Paula Pilar Magan could expect nothing but the hasty dumping of a box into a hole.

Instead, three friars met them at the cemetery gate. They carried the coffin, chanting psalms of resurrection, to a freshly dug grave, where one of them read the Office of the Dead. Long after the family had gone, the friars remained by the fresh mound in prayer.

Spiritual & Corporal. The three friars at the cemetery of Guadix are an experiment which may in a few years become a full-fledged new order: Los Hermanos Fosores de la Miserícordia. It began with two hermits, Hilarion and Bernardo, of the Order of Our Lady of the Desert, in their hermitage near Córdoba.

Brother Hilarion, a onetime sexton now in his early 30s, and Brother Bernardo, an ex-medical student in his late 20s. were both dissatisfied with the purely contemplative life. They decided to start an order that, by combining contemplation with work, would fulfill the seventh precept of spiritual mercy, to pray for the souls of the living and dead, and the seventh precept of corporal mercy, to bury the dead.

Bishop Rafael Alvarez Lara agreed to give the idea a trial in his See of Guadix, and Brothers Hilarion and Bernardo went to work. In the cemetery’s dilapidated tool shed, they arranged two small cells and a tiny kitchen. All day long, they labor in the graveyard, clearing paths, repairing crumbling headstones, replacing rusty iron crosses and digging graves, an average of one a day. Each day they rise at 2 a.m. to walk in meditation through the cemetery to the tiny chapel, where they pray until 4.

They have drawn up rules for the new order, which they hope will be approved officially by the bishop and later by Rome. Members must take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, plus a fourth pledge: to bury the dead. Brothers must shave their heads and wear full-length beards, never smoke, drink wine or eat meat, and never leave their cemetery except for necessity. Postulants must serve a six-month trial period before becoming novices, and must remain novices for two years before being accepted as members of the community. “We are the mystic dead,” explains Hilarion. “Not everyone can stand a lifetime of death in a cemetery.”

An Act of God. Though many have applied, only one man has so far been accepted as a postulant: Joaquín, a 38-year-old taxi driver from Granada. But Brother Hilarion is sure that he and Bernardo have started something that will spread through Spain, and perhaps farther.

“Death is not a repugnant thing,” he says. “It is an act of God, and as such must be respected and praised. From the novitiate of Guadix, we plan to send men all over Spain. Cemeteries are turning pagan. We want to make them Christian again.”