Brother Miguel Campos, FSC

BROTHER MIGUEL CAMPOS, FSC
1938 – 2024

Born Miguel Adolfo Campos in Guantanamo Cuba on 17 June 1938
Died at De La Salle Hall in Lincroft NJ on 4 January 2024
Entered the Panama and Havana Novitiate on 16 July 1959
Received the Religious Habit and Name Miguel Arturo on 7 October 1959
Pronounced Perpetual Vows in Santo Domingo DR on 31 July 1966

ASSIGNMENTS

Scholasticate

1965 – 1968
Santo Domingo DR
Teacher

1968 – 1970
Miami FL
Archdiocese of Miami (Director of Religious Education)

1970 – 1971
Rome Italy
Institute (Director of Lasallianum)

1971 – 1973
Rome Italy
Institute Service (CIL Staff)

1974-1975
Adamstown MD
Christian Brothers Spiritual Center (Staff)

1975 – 1977
Philadelphia PA
La Salle College

1977–1978
Santa Fe NM
Sangre de Cristo Retreat Center (September session)

1978–1978
Jersey City NJ
Hudson Catholic High School (resident)

1978–1981
Miami FL
Archdiocese of Miami (Director of Hispanic Apostolates)

1981–1986
Newark NJ
Archdiocese of Newark (Director of Religious Education)

1986–1987
Paris France
Institute Service (Études Lasalliennes)

1987–1991
Rome Italy
Institute Service (Études Lasalliennes)

1991–1992
Philadelphia PA
Archdiocese of Philadelphia (Hispanic ministry)

1992–1998
Philadelphia PA
La Salle University (Director of Multi-Cultural Program)

1998–2000
Santiago de Cuba
Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba (Pastoral Care & Director of Youth Ministry)

2000–2007
Rome Italy
Institute Service (General Councilor)

2007–2008
Hyattsville MD Studies

2008–2015
Philadelphia PA
Institute Service (Consultant)

2015–2023
Lincroft NJ
De La Salle Hall (resident)

FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS

Saturday, 13 January 2024

Funeral Mass – 2.00pm

La Salle University – De La Salle Chapel

1900 West Olney Avenue – Philadelphia PA 19141

Monday, 15 January 2024

Rite of Committal & Final Commendation – 11.30am

La Salle Hall Chapel

6001 Ammendale Road · Beltsville MD 20705

Reception following

Interment

De La Salle Cemetery

6001 Ammendale Road · Beltsville MD 20705

Brother Miguel died peacefully Thursday morning after a brief respite in hospice care.

The District of Eastern North America remembers Brother Miguel with memorial liturgies according to the tradition of the Institute. Through their prayers, communities and individuals entrust Brother Miguel to God’s loving care.

ABOUT BROTHER MIGUEL CAMPOS

Extremely rare is it that qualities like erudition, spiritual depth, and utter unaffected charm can be said to appear in the life and legacy of the same person. But they did in the person of Brother Miguel Campos, FSC. Scholar, teacher, mentor, leader confrere, friend: Miguel earned all these titles during his six and a half decades in the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Each was a meaningful part of his identity, though he wore them with light and grace.

Born in Guantanamo, Cuba on June 17, 1938, Brother Miguel received the habit of the Brothers shortly before his 21st birthday and during the upheaval that would separate the Cuban Brothers from their schools and their native land. Miguel in his twenties displayed the sort of resilience valued and generally found lacking in many of that age today. Without self-pity or regret, he made the necessary adjustments in geography, language, culture, and field of academic inquiry. Forced by circumstance into becoming an expat, he made opportunity of necessity and became cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world, at home wherever he found himself for ministry or speaking engagements.

Most people know Brother Miguel as one of the leading Lasallian scholars of the post-Vatican II generation. For more than six decades, Miguel shared his passion for our Lasallian heritage with thousands of Brothers and Lasallians through his writings, workshops, and seminars. His zeal for understanding and applying the Founder’s legacy began in his years of undergraduate and graduate work at the Lateran Pontifical University in Rome. His doctoral dissertation led to a renewed appreciation for and understanding of de La Salle’s spiritual masterwork, Meditations for the Time of Retreat. Later on, Miguel entered into his long and storied collaboration and friendship with Brother Michel Sauvage, together writing Announcing the Gospel to the Poor and Encountering God in the Depths of the Mind and Heart, a commentary on de La Salle’s formative text, Explanation of the Method of Mental Prayer.

Brother Miguel served the church beyond the Institute as well. In the United States of America, he worked in the religious education and Latino ministry offices of the archdioceses of Newark and Philadelphia. He led the Office of Multicultural and International Affairs at La Salle University and pioneered many of the functions that would later be included in the portfolio of a vice president for mission. He had the opportunity to return to his homeland after about four decades and served as Pastoral Coordinator and Director of Youth Ministry in the Diocese of Santiago, Cuba.

While involved in that work, Brother Miguel was elected as a General Councilor of the Institute at the beginning of the new millennium and served in that position for seven years. His scholarly depth and spiritual insight greatly enriched the publications of the council during that era. For Miguel, though, pride of authorship was never the issue. He was satisfied that the Founder’s evangelical and missionary genius could become better understood, practiced, and loved by twenty-first century Lasallian educators.

If anyone lived his last years in the shadow of the Cross, Brother Miguel did. Progressive neurological impairment forced this man of limitless intelligence and energy to confront the harshness of finitude. His famed ability to communicate and connect with almost anyone grew sadly limited, and he grew quiet. On January 4th, 2024, Brother Miguel was liberated, as he surely saw it, and entered into the full freedom of God’s presence and love. He leaves the Lasallian educational community not only with a seminal record of insightful and meticulous scholarship but with the memory of a teacher whose sparkling eyes and gentle smile encouraged comfort, reflection, and engagement in all of us whose understanding and ministry have been formed and transformed by his work.

† May he rest in peace. †