page_title: Ricardo Gómez Roji
section_title: Religious service: canon, director and professor
hierarchical_section_title: Ricardo Gómez Roji / Religious service: canon, director and professor
caption_attribution_description: English: El Santísimo Cristo de Burgos, en la Capilla del mismo nombre sita en la Catedral de Santa María. Burgos (España)
context_page_description: Ricardo Gómez Roji was a Spanish Roman-Catholic priest, scholar, publisher and politician. For 26 years he served as a lecturing canon by the Burgos cathedral, known locally for his oratory skills; he also taught theology at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, animated local Catholic agrarian trade unions, and edited and managed few Catholic periodicals and bulletins. His political career climaxed in 1931-1933; elected to the Congress of Deputies as a candidate of a broad local monarchist-Integrist-conservative alliance, he served one term within the Agrarian parliamentary minority. Afterwards he approached Carlism and advanced its cause as a propagandist.
context_section_description: Gómez's role as the lecturing canon was first of all to deliver sermons during religious services at the cathedral; indeed he preached regularly throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Initially little known, in few years he grew to prominence and already in 1914 he was referred to as “elocuente orador”; by mid-decade Gómez was taking to the pulpit during major feasts like the Palm Sunday and in presence of prestigious audience like the local ayuntamiento. In the late 1910s his position in the Burgos community was already well established; not only hailed as “orador sagrado de bien cimentada y merecida fama”, on numerous occasions he had his sermons discussed in detail in local Catholic press, usually acclaimed for doctrinal competence, oratory skills and educational value. He was far less frequently noted as engaged in other routine religious duties; his presence during wedding mass was considered a mark of prestige for the marrying couple.
  Apart from delivering sermons Gómez engaged in numerous Burgos-based Catholic organizations. In 1913 he was among the founders of Real Hermandad del Santísimo Cristo de Burgos and by 1917 he grew to the abbot of the brotherhood; he performed the role at least until the late 1920s. In the mid-1910s he became "director espiritual" of Asociación de Devotos de San José de la Montaña and director of Asociación Corte de Honor a Nuestra Señora del Pilar. In the early 1920s Gómez engaged in Unión Misional del Clero and by mid-decade he was member of Junta Directiva of Ateneo de Burgos; in 1928 he became vice-president of Junta Diocesana of Liga de Defensa del Clero and in 1930 he assumed management of Círculo de Estudios of Internado Teresiano in Burgos. As member of some of these organizations Gómez organized pilgrimages, e.g. in 1925 to Rome and the Holy Land; he engaged also in charity, e.g. by contributing to Fiesta de la Caridad. Since the early 1910s he was engaged in buildup of Sindicación Agrícola, local Catholic agrarian trade unions.
  As competent scholar and good organizer Gómez contributed to major nationwide Catholic projects, e.g. co-organizing Congreso Eucarístico Internacional in Madrid of 1911 or representing the Burgos diocese during preparations to Eucharistic Congress in Rome of 1922; he also took part in countless minor initiatives, like representing Burgos in the 1925 centenary of birth of San Luis Gonzaga. In acknowledgement of his scholarly competence in 1920 he was nominated professor of theology at Seminario de San Jerónimo, the Burgos branch of Universidad Pontificia of Salamanca; he later specialized in dogmatics. In the early 1920s he joined the staff of Pontificio y Real Seminario Español de S. Francisco Javier para Misiones Extranjeras, the Burgos-based papal centre which prepared candidates for missionary service.
caption: Cristo de Burgos
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