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Father Gonzaga is the hapless priest who is brought in to examine the angel. The priest, as a religious figure, should be charitable and empathetic towards the wretched angel, but he instead warns the townspeople against recognizing the old man as angel. Through the character of Father Gonzaga, Márquez satirizes of the Catholic church, suggesting that the church is more occupied with bureaucracy and internal wrangling than with the work of charity and spreading empathy: “They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel,” Márquez writes of church officials, “if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings.” Instead of doing his duty towards the angel, Father Gonzaga is relieved when the attention dies down and he no longer has to think about the angel at all.
Father Gonzaga Quotes in A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
The A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings quotes below are all either spoken by Father Gonzaga or refer to Father Gonzaga. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Quotes
Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels.
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Christian tradition says that people should not “neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2). That is, treat everyone with kindness and empathy because you never know who they might be. Father Gonzaga goes against this principle, being more concerned with investigating whether the angel is authentic or not. Again, the angel is made into an “other” because he does not speak the “proper” language of God (Latin), and Father Gonzaga can’t believe that a true angel would smell and look so bad. Furthermore, Father Gonzaga’s arrogance is apparent in his dismay that Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta
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Father Gonzaga Character Timeline in A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
The timeline below shows where the character Father Gonzaga appears in A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
By 7pm that evening, the local priest, Father Gonzaga , arrives. By now, all kinds of wild theories about the angel are being put...
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Father Gonzaga ’s warnings fall on deaf ears. People flock in such numbers to see the strange...
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...the spider-woman, they stop paying much attention to the winged old man. At long last, Father Gonzaga can get a proper night’s sleep again without worrying about whether the old man is...
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