Rielo died Dec. 6 at age 81 in New York. His funeral was held today in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Almudena in the Spanish capital, and his remains rest in the Almudena cemetery.
Jesús Fernández Hernández, president of the Institute of Idente Missionaries, wrote a message on the occasion of the death of the founder of this new way of consecrated life, in which he affirms: «In Fernando Rielo, any human being, of any religion or ideology, always had a friend, an apostle, a teacher, a humanist.»
Rielo founded the Institution of the Idente Men and Women Missionaries in 1959 in Santa Cruz, on the Canary island of Tenerife.
Last October, the Holy See conferred on this entity the rank of a new form of consecrated life based in what they call «filial holiness,» which responds to the apostolic imperative «Go and teach all nations.»
Rielo had lived in New York since 1988, where he received medical care until his death. The Idente institution has about 90 houses in 25 nations.
