After enduring heart surgery in 2015 and a stroke in 2016, Fernando Picó, Puerto Rico's leading historian and a figure renowned all over the Caribbean, passed away on June 27, 2017, at the age of 75. Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, Picó attended high school at the Colegio San Ignacio, where he received “the call” and decided to become a priest. In 1959, he joined the seminary of Saint Andrew-on-Hudson, Hyde Park, New York, and later went on to Loyola Seminary in Shrub Oak, New York, where he studied philosophy and theology. In addition, he earned a BA in History at Fordham University in 1965 and then an MA in 1966. In 1970, he received a PhD in Medieval History from Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation devolved around on what he jokingly called “the contentious bishops” of Laon, France, during the thirteenth century. He was ordained as a priest a year later.