Upon receiving the unexpected news of the death of Bishop Javier Echevarría, so many memories of my encounters with him on his frequent trips to Pamplona, especially during the years when I was report came to my mind President. In these brief lines I do not intend to give a sketch of his rich personality, but allow me to highlight, by way of a few personal anecdotes, some of his traits that I was able to perceive in a special way in those encounters.

The first was affection. Father, as we called him in the Work, was above all a man who knew how to love. I remember the first time I saw him after he had proposed to me the possibility of being named President. I had expressed my willingness to do whatever was most convenient, but with the natural doubt as to whether he would live up to that trust. At the end of a meeting that he held with professors and students at the Belagua I went to greet him. high school Mayor Belagua I approached him to thank him and express my fears: he did not let me finish, gave me a hug and told me, do not worry, you will do very well. And that's how all the meetings with him were: he made you feel very comfortable; he was attentive to what you might need; you could sense that he was interested in your things and he kept surprising you with questions about some topic that you had told him about a few months before. How many times I have commented with other people, not without some astonishment, his great report. In reality it was something more than that: the memory fruit of the interest born of affection.

Secondly, his trust in others and his love of freedom. Mr. Javier Echevarría was the Chancellor of the University and therefore it would have been reasonable that in his meetings with the President or with the Governing Body of the University team he would have asked specific questions about the progress of matters, corrected what he considered was not going well and made the suggestions he considered necessary. Her meetings with him, however, were of a different nature. He was certainly interested in everything that was happening at the University, he asked about new projects - I remember, for example, his interest in the Museum, although contemporary art was perhaps not one of his personal preferences - and sometimes he showed special interest in some of them, such as research in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences. But he respected with great delicacy the decision-making capacity of each one and trusted those who were responsible for making government decisions, although perhaps he would have approached things differently. At the same time, he never lacked suggestions of much greater depth, fruit of his priestly soul: that we should love our students, that each and every one of them should feel personally cared for, that we should live unity and charity, that we should support and echo the teachings of the Pope?

And finally, his serenity and optimism. As Chancellor of the University and as Prelate of Opus Dei, he received a lot of news, even bad news, and I am sure that he knew better than we do the problems of our society. However, I do not remember a single meeting in which his words were negative: although objectively the facts he commented on were negative, he always knew how to give them an optimistic and hopeful approach . One memory: after the attack on the University on November 30, 2008, he immediately sent us the message to be calm and pray for those who had committed the attack. And in the fax he sent us the following morning, he asked us - "leaving everyone free" - to turn the gathering planned for that day into a prayer that would be "an expression of forgiveness for the aggressors and a plea to Providence for a just and balanced social coexistence, knowing how to respect all people and contributing to peace in the whole world.

These are some of the many lessons that we have received from Bishop Javier Echevarría during these years; lessons that he learned from the hand of St. Josemaría and that he was able to embody in an exemplary way. May they also inspire the daily actions of those of us who work at the University of Navarre. I am convinced that we can continue to count on his help at financial aid, which is now even more effective.