"These ten years as a priest have been the most wonderful of my life".
Wuillis Azuaje is 39 years old and studies licentiate degree at Canon Law. He is from Venezuela, where, God willing, he will return in June when he finishes his last course.
14 | 04 | 1921
When Wuillis Azuaje (Trujillo-Venezuela,1981) arrived in Pamplona on September 13, 2018, it was the first time he had crossed the Atlantic. Two colleagues from the residency program San Miguel of the Navarrese capital were waiting for him that Thursday night at the bus station of the Navarrese capital. As a Venezuelan, he was struck by the character of the people of Navarre, the number of people walking through the streets and the variety of beautiful churches in the city. Also the issue number of Eucharists that are celebrated daily in his parish (San Miguel): "Nine every day".
He is currently in his final year of studies at licentiate degree at Canon Law and when he returns to Puerto Cabello, the city where he was pastor before coming to study at the University of Navarra, he will be the first canonist of his diocese.
Wuillis Azuaje is the seventh of eight siblings and although he was educated in Catholicism and even had several relatives who were priests, he assures that he discovered his vocation little by little. He had a bad experience at catechesis for his first communion, which caused him to distance himself from the faith and he did not receive the sacrament until he was a teenager. By chance he met a group of training Catholic on his high school, where he began to gradually draw closer to God and returned to the parish. "There were about fifty of us young people and we had a phenomenal time."
He recalls that in 1998 he had the opportunity to meet a priest of Opus Dei who came to his church to give a talk on Blessed Josemaria Escriva. "I had never heard of him or Opus Dei, but I was impressed to see someone dressed in a cassock and smiling. The image of that priest, the face of St. Josemaría and the curiosity to get to know Opus Dei were engraved in my head. There are many wonderful things in the Church that we don't know about," he says.
When he was 17 years old, and through a friend, he visited the seminar, he began to attend to the vocation ministry, "although everyone told me that I was not the best person to enter the seminar because I was a troublemaker ".
"Gradually I lost my fear and realized that being a priest is a dream that has to be fulfilled with the help of others financial aid , you cannot dream alone. For me it was core topic the financial aid of my spiritual director and the companions of seminar. These ten years as a priest have been the most beautiful of my life", he says.
He feels very grateful for the financial aid he has received from the benefactors for his formation at the University of Navarra. And, asked about his future plans, he assures that they are those that the bishop of his diocese has for him: "In a few years I would like to see myself as I was in 2010 when I was ordained, happy and with the strength to wear myself out for my parish. There is something very important in the priesthood: respect and obedience to the bishop and love for his diocese".
