Cesáreo Gabaráin

Cesáreo Gabaráin (16 May 1936 – 30 April 1991) was a Spanish Catholic priest and composer of liturgical songs such as Pescador de hombres (Fisher of Men). He received a Gold Record award in Spain, and his music is well known and sung by English- and Spanish-speaking people. Gabaráin became a hymn-writer when he was thirty and went on to write about five hundred songs. He tried to write songs that were easy to learn and be sung by the entire congregation. His hymns have cited as supportive in moments of personal and communal prayer and praise to God, but were sullied by credible published reports that Gabaráin sexually abused schoolboys in the 1970s.

Life

Cesáreo Gabaráin was born in Hernani (Gipuzkoa, Basque Country) in 1936, shortly before the Spanish Civil War and World War II. In addition to music, from 1946 to 1952 he studied at the minor seminary in Zaragoza, then at the major seminary in San Sebastián. He was ordained a priest in 1959. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was a chaplain at various colleges and nursing homes. During these years, he was a member of the Marist Brothers.

Named a chaplain prelate of the newly elected Pope John Paul II in 1979, Gabaráin conducted workshops in 22 US cities and recorded 37 albums before his death. He ministered to cyclists participating in the Tour de France and other athletes. Five of his hymns are in the United Methodist Hymnal, the most popular of which is "Fisher of Men" (1974). This hymn, which features a well-loved gentle melody, was used in two movies. When tour guides in Palestine claimed that the hymn was written alongside Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) based on the lyrics, Gabaráin smiled because he had written it in Madrid. "Fisher of Men" has been translated into more than 80 languages.

In the 1980s, Gabaráin was an assistant priest at a parish in Madrid and head of a religious department at a college.

In 1991 he died of cancer in Anzuola, shortly before his 55th birthday.

500 songs for evangelism

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) permitted different styles of liturgical music, which gave Gabaráin a new freedom in hymn-writing. His songs were often inspired by people he met, and written with the intention to save more souls. He wrote about 500 songs as a teaching tool for church schools and to help missionaries. Gabaráin's personal favorites were "Fisher of Men" and "Together Like Brothers", owing to their popularity.

He met Pope John Paul II, who also considered "Fisher of Men" to be a favorite. The song was translated into English by Gertrude C. Suppe, George Lockwood and Raquel Gutiérrez-Achon as "Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore". The Polish version of the song ("Barka"), translated by Stanisław Szmidt, was especially popular.

Abuse accusations

See also: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

Gabaráin's noted contributions to church music are now sullied by credible published reports that he sexually abused several under-aged boys when he was a chaplain at Colegio Marista in Chamberí, Madrid. In August 2021, the Spanish daily El País reported on accusations from 1978 at the school run by the Marist Brothers, a religious community of which Gabaráin was a member at the time. Eduardo Mendoza, one of Gabaráin's students, told his tutor about the abuse. Several other students corroborated Mendoza and shared their own accounts of abuse by Gabaráin. An investigation resulted in Gabaráin being fired from the school and dismissed from the Marist Brothers in early 1979.

In response to these public revelations in 2021, Oregon Catholic Press (OCP), the designated distributor of Gabaráin's music in the US, scrubbed any commercial mention of Gabaráin from its website and began reviewing the presence of his works in hymnals and other products.