Formed by Father Joseph Walijewski, Adolfo “Bambi” Brito and René Tenorio continue his mission through the children and family of Casa Hogar Juan Pablo II
Noel Furger
Father Joseph Walijewski Legacy Guild Director of Development
Father Joseph Walijewski, the Diocese of La Crosse missionary known in Peru as Padre José, devoted his priesthood to serving people living in poverty and ultimately founded Casa Hogar Juan Pablo II, a faith-centered home for children in Lurín. Today, as his cause for canonization continues, the clearest evidence of his legacy may be found not in buildings or institutions, but in the people he formed. Adolfo “Bambi” Brito Bambarén and René Tenorio are among them.
An Open Door
Adolfo Brito Bambarén, known to everyone as Bambi, grew up in Villa El Salvador. As a boy, he sometimes kicked a soccer ball against the wall of Padre José’s rectory. Padre José watched the neighborhood boys gather on the church grounds and recognized something worth nurturing in them. They needed a safe place and something more than a wall against which to kick a ball. Padre José opened his door.
Movie nights became something the neighborhood children could count on: a few hours of belonging and the kind of evening many of them could otherwise only imagine. Bambi recalls that Padre José would sometimes drift off during the movie, but he did not mind. He was happy simply to be with the other neighborhood children and the man who cared for them.
Padre José understood that a child who could imagine a better life might one day find it. He hoped his home, his companionship and even the movies might awaken that imagination.
Padre José was first and foremost a priest, but what he gave Bambi extended beyond the faith. He gave him a way of seeing people. In the community soup kitchens he organized, Padre José would gather everyone and remind them, “Be hungry for God.”
Lessons That Lasted
Padre José had a way of turning simple moments into lessons that endured. He once told Bambi, with a straight face but warmth beneath the words, “Bambi, don’t worry. Nothing is going to turn out right.” Those who knew Padre José understood the humor and challenge contained in the remark. It was one more way he urged the people he loved to persevere and give their best.
Padre José baptized Bambi, who grew up within the parish life the priest had built. Bambi’s brother Alfredo was formed in much the same way. Years later, Alfredo would become the last person to speak with Padre José before his death. Neither man could have known that the unplanned conversation would take on such lasting significance.
When Padre José turned his attention toward the abandoned children of Lurín, many of whom were cold, hungry and without anywhere to turn, Bambi followed. He has been at Casa Hogar Juan Pablo II since it opened its gates to its first child.
Today, Bambi serves as director of the kitchen, preparing meals each day for the children who live there. The boy who once sat on a priest’s living-room floor is now the man making sure no child goes hungry.
He also keeps a worn, framed copy of Desiderata, a poem Padre José shared with him, hanging in his home. Some things are not put away.
The Child Always
Bambi was not the only person whose life Padre José was shaping. René Tenorio arrived at Casa Hogar in 1998, young, enthusiastic and, by her own admission, still learning about life. She came to serve as a tutor. What she found was Padre José and an entirely new way of understanding her work.
He taught in short phrases that stayed with her: “Patience, more patience and even more patience.” “As you make your bed, so your life will be.” And one that still makes people smile when they repeat it: “A happy cow gives plenty of good milk.”
At first, the sayings struck René as unusual. Over the years, however, they became principles by which she lived in a home where children needed calm and consistency above all else.
During Holy Hours, Padre José spoke about God’s love and returned again and again to the same reminder: The children were the most important treasure. “Let the little children come to me.”
He spoke with such conviction that his words became the lens through which René understood everything she did. In moments of doubt, she would go to him, and he would return her to something simple: God first, and the child always.
Family as Mission
Within that daily rhythm, René met Bambi. Shared work became a shared life. When they married, Padre José celebrated the sacrament alongside Father Sebastian.
Bambi remembers what Padre José told him that day: “In God’s vision of marriage, there is only beauty.”
He taught us that family was not separate from the mission. Family was the mission, lived from the inside out.
Bambi and René now have three children of their own. René serves as the home’s nurse, caring for the children of Casa Hogar when they are sick, injured or simply in need of someone steady. Together, she and Bambi continue in the rhythm that first formed them: meals prepared, children cared for and a family living what it was taught.
Padre José did more than build a mission in Peru. He became a father within it. Among the children he formed are Bambi and René, still feeding, healing and caring for others as Padre José once cared for them.