"True wealth is sharing," Pope Francis comments in an audience with businessmen.Pope's monthly video: for small and medium-sized entrepreneursMay it be for the glory of God! This was the ejaculatory phrase that, printed on a banner of about 3×5 meters, could be read in one of the most central streets of Madrid, shortly before Christmas 2024. It was the arrival of the Álvaro Moreno The key to the event was the banner that thanked the city for its welcome, the colleagues and workers for their dedication and, above all, God. "Because everything is for his glory".
Alvaro Moreno says at the beginning of our conversation that "he has no gift of the gab". He may not be a scholar, but what is clear after an hour of conversation is that he speaks about God with a passion and simplicity that many preachers would like to have.
If for santa Teresa of JesusGod walked among the pans", for Álvaro he does it among shirts and pants, invoices and suppliers.
God "came looking for him" and reminded him of "who he was". That is why he does not want to steal from the limelight: "When I open a store I say let it be for God's glory, because if it's not for His glory, what are we here for?"
"God sought me through his Mother."
The "new" Alvaro began in times of pandemic, although mobility restrictions were already more relaxed. "I heard the bells ringing for 9 o'clock mass and, without knowing why, I went into the church". It was the convent of San Pedro, a Carmelite convent in Osuna, the town in Seville where Álvaro Moreno was born and lives with his family.
"I went in 'just because' and something changed. When I left that Mass I thought 'I can't miss this'. God, in his infinite mercy, gave me a new life".
"When you live immersed in the self, in that misery that we all have, everything suffers: the family, the employees... I used to live with a terrible tension," recalls the businessman, "that pride that makes you wake up angry with the world and you take that discomfort to a meeting... The Lord is the opposite. The Lord calls you; and when the Lord touches your heart as he has touched mine, everything changes".
Alvaro says these words "convinced": "God sought me out through his Mother, through Our Lady of Mount Carmel, through some bells for a Mass.
"When I open a store I say let it be for God's glory, because if it's not for His glory, what are we here for?"
Álvaro Moreno
A path of grace
Although Álvaro had always lived in a culturally Catholic environment, that Mass at COVID marked the beginning of his integral experience of the faith, which changed his way of acting and treating those around him. "He calls me and from then on I cannot be the same as before. Because I am still a sinner but I discover that in sin is my death and I am discovering, little by little, all the gifts that the Church gives us".
Alvaro's step is that of living the "social" faith on the one hand, and his work and personal life on the other: "Before, I was one of those who went to Church, but it was a world and then I entered my life and went 'elsewhere'".
The "click" occurs when he realizes that "he was going to Mass and the Lord, through the Word, through Eucharistic communion..., little by little you start to hate that sin, although I tell you that I leave Mass and I lack 'the song of a stiff' to fall again," he says graciously. "And we also have everything the Church offers us, such as confession, which is what the Lord came for, to forgive us".
"All those gifts are the ones I can take with me to work," he declares forcefully, "A 'good morning!', when you arrive at the ship, or not to start 'squeezing' in a meeting as soon as you get there. I myself realize that you get further with love than with tension. And now I also fall into these behaviors, eh, that the devil catches me many times. But at least, you detect it and you see the 'cobwebs' that the devil weaves for you. I even notice it physically.
"I am still a sinner," Moreno emphasizes, "but now I have the sacraments and through them, the Lord gives us these doses of love and you notice it every day and others notice it too. Christianity is not that you can take it to your life, to your family, it is a way of life".
May it be for the glory of God
Before opening a new store, like the one in Madrid or the last one opened in the center of Seville, Álvaro Moreno's store windows are covered with a message of thanks and an unambiguous "declaration": May it be to the glory of God.
Far from hiding his status as a Catholic, Moreno declares it in his professional work and, if you ask him, he answers simply: "Everything I have is thanks to God and by God's grace. I am a clear example. I have no studies, the deadly sins hit me hard: I am fickle, impulsive... things that do not 'marry' with a perfect model".
In the last few years, his company has grown a lot: "We have 71 stores and all I can say is 'My God, thank you!' Thank you for putting this in our hands, for so many people who fight every day for this company to go the way it is going. It is all thanks to God. And I also thank Him for being able to give this testimony, and God forbid that I should hide from something that is His!
Another characteristic of Álvaro Moreno's stores is that, in many of them, several of his workers are boys and girls with Down Syndrome. They are part of his project Stores with soul, an initiative that was born a long time ago to "give back to society what it gives us" and which, in the years it has been in place, has turned out to be a channel of blessings for all employees.
"I see our colleagues with Down syndrome and it is such a great grace that we have with them, they are a blessing from heaven," Moreno emphasizes.
Large families also get special treatment at Álvaro Moreno with a permanent discount in its stores.
Different ways of "giving back" what they receive and which, of course, Moreno does not want to use as "medals" because "they would be empty if they were only a way of glorifying ourselves".
"God does not see me as the businessman, but as Álvaro, as a husband, father of my four children, companion of my partners."
Álvaro Moreno
"I ask the Lord to take away my self."
How does Alvaro Moreno pray, what does a person who runs a company on which so many people depend ask the Lord? The question is not an easy one, although the answer is simple: "I often say, Lord... What can I say? I don't let you speak," Alvaro Moreno answers.
"Many Sundays, in the convent of St. Peter here in Osuna, I start talking to the Lord and I begin to ask Him, to ask... I realize that I only ask Him and I say 'speak to me something, Lord. Come on! Tell me how I could also console your heart a little bit, how I could help you... and a few minutes later, I am again asking and giving thanks!
"I ask the Lord to take away the 'me'," adds Álvaro Moreno, "because we always tend to put ourselves first, and in the end it is counterproductive. I realize that when I take away me (my self) I am also more aware of others".
Moreno is still the young man from Osuna who started working in the family business "because I didn't like studying at all". In the showcase of the world, Moreno is today a successful businessman, but this is not the basis of his faith: "I don't love the Lord because I am doing well. When I entered that mass, I was in a pretty bad moment. I was lost. As a businessman, I have always been very cautious, I don't take risks. And then came COVID, the ships came, we had to pay for them and we saw how the euros went out of the account".
It was at that moment, when he felt "broken" when God came to look for him through the Virgin and "gave me a new life. It is in that life that God gives you the humility to ask for forgiveness, something that before, I did not do and it killed me and others".
That is why the successful businessman stands aside before the Tabernacle, "God does not see me as the businessman, but as Álvaro, as a husband, father of my four children, companion of my companions and that is how he loves me. He loves me as a little sheep of his flock, whom he knows well".
