Last Wednesday, February 17, the academic ceremony in honor of Professor Pedro Juan Viladrich, Full Professor of the School of Canon Law of the University of Navarra, took place at the classroom Magna of the Schools Ecclesiastical on the occasion of his seventieth anniversary. The event was attended by the professors of the faculty of School, students, colleagues and relatives of the honoree.

It began with a speech by Hector Franceschi, Full Professor of the School of Canon Law of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, who emphasized that Viladrich had been a teacher not only for him, but for several generations of canonists, since from the beginning he had understood the need to recover the dialogue of the Church's juridical heritage in relation to marriage and current culture, and to what extent science influences marriage, parenthood and the family in Western cultures with profoundly Christian roots. "A marriage system has been built on the back of the canonical marriage system, he said; the only thing in common are the words, but nothing more." Throughout his professional career, Professor Pedro Juan Viladrich has worked on the true definition of marriage . He concluded his intervention with the wish that the Canon Law not be reduced to nullity processes, but that work be done on understanding the beauty of marriage and the family, also in textbooks. "The canonist must have a strong anthropological base, an interdisciplinary interest, otherwise we would become technicians and not one who seeks what is right, what is true," assured Prof. Franceschi.

For his part, Carlos Martinez de Aguirre, Full Professor of the School of Law at the University of Zaragoza and president of the observatory The Family Watch, traced the most important lines of the current destruction of marriage "we have not witnessed a mere change in the rules of the game: the game has changed," he said. "The Canon Law brings to Civil an anthropology and it is possible to build", although the core topic is not only legal. He appealed to the need to "rely on the data of sociology, medicine, which stubbornly tell us that one with one works better, and that divorce has harmful consequences for society." And he proposed to recover the meaning of marriage through filiation, which is perpetual.


After a break, Javier Escrivá-Ivars, Full Professor of the School of Law of the University of Valencia and director of the high school of Sciences for the Family of the University of Navarra, as well as Javier Ferrer, Full Professor of the School of Law of the University of Zaragoza, intervened.
 

Speech by Professor Pedro Juan Viadrich

In his speech, Professor Pedro Juan Viladrich , after explaining how he arrived at Canon Law without intending to, "I never thought of becoming a canonist; I wanted to be a theater actor," he said, and he did so with the help of Professors Javier Hervada and Pedro Lombardía. He used the figure of the seed and its tempos to explain the importance of passion in what we do and love, the transforming power of love and the fecundity that derives from it.

The founder and first director of the high school of Sciences for the Family of the University of Navarra explained that "while sowing, the sower must joyfully renounce to see the fruits, an attitude compatible with the total submission to circumstances that we did not choose, but from which we can take luster. For he who loves sees light in his beloved. Love -he assured- does not depend on the compensation of our beloved, but on being able to see the kindness he/she has, be it a person or a circumstance". Kindness and honesty must be sown. "Then that seed is always fruitful," he continued, "there is no difference between love and fruitfulness. He warned of the danger of weariness, which lurks when reality is perceived as a general defeat. "We are sowing, he reminded, the immediate fruit of the seed is to rot, to be in blackness." We cannot lose faith that if we are a good seed, fruit will always come from us.

Finally, the Dean of the School of Canon Law, Professor Antonio Viana, closed the ceremony mentioning the numerous adhesions received, among which he highlighted that of Cardinal Julian Herranz, in which he affirmed that the honoree is one of the "great renovators of the science of Canon Law", to which the Dean added that "he has been and continues to be with his writings and with his teaching".