I have not met any priest who was a Saint. And that I have tried quite a few throughout my life. Better as well. The sorrows of men, even the most spiritual, are not divine and human problems. Well it is good to encounter men like us and that, where appropriate, we come to God, to the good, to the transcendence, the more beyond the Saints, on the other hand, tend to be so far from the ordinary mortals the most that we produce is admiration, when not astonishment, bewilderment, envy or even more disturbing emotions. There are some of those curas-hombres that no saints, who have impressed me at one time or another of this earthly pilgrimage. I here, evoking fly pen, only to the age of my most grooms.
For example, to the father Valencia, escolapio, that crossed my path in the distant 1960 and which, unlike the usual and routine liturgical adocenamiento that it was customary then, managed to breathe an unusual vitality to religious practice. With an innovative, communicative sense, almost, almost of marketing, supo adapt the techniques of the old spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius to the needs of teenagers of the time. Years later, in a few workshops of Christendom, Ismael Diez caused me a similar impact. The secular priest turned out to be a priest so, so human, without relinquishing the costume talar, as timidly began already to do others, could show as proletarian as most proletarian of the laborers in the margin left in the Nervion, and so abertzale as the most radical of the supporters of the then emerging nationalism. In the middle and as contrast, two very different Jesuits, which shows that the society of Jesus has managed to encompass a broad spectrum of people, all of them under the common denominator of the brilliance of his intellect. One was the father Jose Arana, theologian, philosopher, sociologist, and I don’t know how many more titles, who knew how to bring us closer to a so hermetic thought for young people then as it turned out to be from the German Karl Rahner, with its innovative concept of religion and of the religious.
Also, thanks to him, we learned about the existence of the paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, with a lifetime committed to show that Darwin and the Bible were not incompatible at all. Other unrepeatable character of those difficult years was Luis Bernaola, who was piloting the Universidad Comercial de Deusto with iron hand. That University, which have left people so different and so unique as Carlos Garaikoetxea, Emilio Ibarra, Joaquin Almunia, Alfredo Saenz, Pedro Luis Uriarte and many others, cannot be understood without the father Bernaola. Methods questionable and energetic person, understand that the academic, personal and professional, vital, excellence in short was a sine qua non requirement for all those under his tutelage. And faith that got it. Without their convictions, their energy, their discipline and their perseverance, I am sure that those who had the opportunity to meet you not would become what we’ve been. I’ll stick with that conclusion, at the end of the fleeting evocation of some priests, a u otherwise, have influenced me throughout life. If they had been santos-santos, surely not I would have approached them and, in any case, it would have failed to live up to his. On the other hand, being hombres-santos, men-good or simply men, I have managed to learn from them knowledge, attitudes, experiences and reflections which I am sure have served me along a path zigzagging and still unfinished. Original author and source of the article.