Segundo Llorente Villa SJ (November 18, 1906 – January 26, 1989) was a Spanish Jesuit, philosopher and author who spent 40 years as a missionary among the Yup'ik in the most remote parts of Alaska.
Segundo Llorente Villa was born on November 18, 1906, in Mansilla Mayor, a little town in the Province of León in northwestern Spain.
He felt called to the Society of Jesus and in 1923, at age 17, began his novitiate in the Jesuit seminary of Carrión de los Condes in the province of Palencia.
This seminary would also educate his brother Amando, a Jesuit who became a teacher and mentor to Fidel Castro, and later was a chaplain and director of spiritual services for the U.S. Army in Miami.
After arriving in America, Llorente attended Gonzaga University, a Jesuit institution in Spokane, Washington, to learn English.
Most of Llorente's best known stories about experiences in Akulurak, Alakanuk, Bethel, and Kotzebue are recounted in his books Memoirs of a Yukon Priest and Cuarenta años en el círculo Polar ("Forty Years in the Arctic Circle").
In October 1952, he was honored by being selected to attend the Third Congress of Missions in Monterrey, Mexico, which is discussed in his book Trineos y eskimales ("Sleds and Eskimos").
The results of the already-conducted territorial primary elections (described by Alaskan historian R. N. DeArmond as "the lost primary") were abandoned and elections for state offices were called by territorial governor Mike Stepovich, who resigned from office to launch a campaign for the U.S. Senate, challenging eventual winner Ernest Gruening.
Llorente was already serving his community in a minor function in the remote Wade Hampton electoral district where 90% of the population was Eskimo.
He retired at age 68, in 1975, after 40 years of service to the Alaska missions, and was transferred to Moses Lake, Washington, where he worked with the local Hispanic community.
Llorente wrote hundreds of deeply moving and engaging essays with unusual cheerfulness about his challenging religious vocation in extremely frigid and difficult conditions.
Cuarenta años en el círculo Polar ("Forty Years in the Arctic Circle"), his best known work, is an anthology of his previous books.