I met Marcos Pou just a few months ago. It was in a village in Catalonia – La Gleva – where I had gone to give a talk about my experience in Lebanon with Christian families from Iraq and Syria who had taken refuge there. There was a group of young people from Communion and Liberation, a movement within the Catholic Church, on a study retreat. Marcos was in charge of the young people.
The first time I spoke with him and heard him speak was over dinner. It took me very little time to see that he was a man of God. The way he looked at you, the way he spoke, the way he listened, the way he asked questions. His calm, serene gaze went straight to your heart. His smile was genuine.
He spoke plainly, without fear, and made himself understood. He spoke with love. He said what he thought, and you could tell he had given a great deal of thought to what he said. A man of faith and reason. Perhaps that is why so many young people looked to him as a counsellor.
When the talk was over he came up to me and asked me, with real concern, what we could do for those Christians who, just a few hours away by plane, are dying for their faith. His concern was sincere, and we found the answer together: to pray and to live the faith consistently in the place where God has put us. The very same answer that, months later, the Archbishop of Mosul (Iraq), Emil Nona, would give me.
Every time I ran into Marcos it made me glad; without knowing him very well, I knew he was a fine person and someone you could trust.
I remember perfectly how I came back from the talk at which I met Marcos and all the young people who were there on a study retreat. Thrilled. Until then I had only heard about Communion and Liberation at university, but the day I came to know it through Marcos my view changed completely; it had little to do with what I had been told or what I had thought. And I came back particularly impressed by Marcos: there were quite a few people to whom I spoke about how very pleasantly surprised I had been by that young man who was running the show. He had a special charisma.
One of the last times I saw Marcos was at Sants station. As it happened, he was going to Pamplona and I to Bilbao. We were leaving at the same time and on the same train. We arranged to meet at 9 in the cafeteria. I was told that the trains, although they travelled together, might not be connected to one another.
In the end it turned out that the trains were coupled together but you could not pass from one carriage to the other; we both tried but did not manage it. We went back to our respective carriages and that night – after asking a mutual friend for my email address – Marcos wrote to me saying that my suspicions were right: the trains were coupled but not connected. He told me he was going to pray a lot for me during the days he would be on retreat in Pamplona. He was thoughtful even with those he knew least well.
Marcos died on the night of 21 February 2015, shortly after giving his yes to God. He had just entered the Seminary of Barcelona after finishing his degree. He wanted his life to belong to the Lord. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable, and Marcos has left this earthly and perishable life. His life surely belongs to the Lord already, though in a different way from the one he had imagined. May God keep him in his glory and give comfort to his family.
Marcos Pou was a man of God and, already in this life, an example for many.
All that remains now is to pray for his soul and to ask that his way of living and understanding life, his gaze and his smile, his attentiveness and his small kindnesses, may rub off on us.
See you soon, Marcos, God willing.
Machine translation. If you spot a mistake, do write to us.