The testimonies about the figure of Javier Echevarría that are being published these days highlight various aspects of a long life of service to the Church and society. As President of a university where Bishop Echevarría was Chancellor for 22 years, I can contribute my experience as a witness -and grateful beneficiary- of that task of university government.

Echevarría was a vocational university student, in love with the institution, as were his predecessors, Blessed Álvaro del Portillo and St. Josemaría Escrivá. When I had the opportunity to inform him of what could be considered some achievements or successes, he always behaved in the same way: with affectionate gratitude, but without the slightest hint of complacency. And he encouraged me to contemplate the great horizons of work still pending for a university like ours, barely six decades old. An illusionary magnanimity in his objectives, so typical of the genuine university spirit, informed all his work as Chancellor. "Never say enough" is an expression that I heard several times from his lips.

This continuous demand, which was made friendly thanks to his affectionate disposition and a lively sense of humor -very Madrilenian, I would dare to say-, was based on his passion for the search for truth in all fields of knowledge. Hence his constant encouragement of initiatives that would contribute to the development of a rigorous scientific research , beyond shortcuts, without yielding to intellectual fashions, oriented only to the advancement of science, and, in final, to the progress of humanity. As he declared on a certain occasion, "to affirm that the university is there to serve the truth means opting for a slow revolution, but which is, in final, the only effective and profound one".

In Echevarría's mind, this research task should be the indispensable reverse side of the students' training . About this educational mission statement , he used to offer me a committee as simple as compromising: love your students very much. It was not, of course, an invitation to encapsulate them in a pampering bubble. Rather, it was a question of putting in a deeper and more enriching context the demands of university work itself, that town hall of teachers and students, which naturally calls for a climate of mutual benevolence in order to develop its full potential. In fact, he often insisted on the idea that university students could not settle into the utilitarian employment of the knowledge they had learned, but that - in coherence with the Christian identity of our institution - we should help them to become aware of their social responsibility, so that they could put that knowledge at the service of the common good. According to agreement , "far from offering them a protective, reductive refuge, the university must help to temper the spirits of young people, so that they may courageously set out to revitalize a freer, more creative and more caring society.

Another important feature of his vision of the university has to do with multidisciplinarity. Hence, he was particularly pleased that the then Cardinal Ratzinger highlighted this aspect of the University of Navarra after his stay in 1998, on the occasion of his doctorate honoris causa. In the tradition of Christian humanism, he considered dialogue between the sciences to be fundamental, especially in order to address some of the most complex challenges of today's society. As a result of this interest, he promoted the creation of Institute for Culture and Society, a research center that since 2010 has brought together researchers from various sciences on topics such as poverty, globalization and the family.

But his serene reaction after the last two terrorist attacks suffered by the University in 2002 and 2008 was perhaps the most lasting impression he left on me humanly. He saw in the unreasonableness of that violent hatred an ignorance that he called us to overcome by "sowing peace and joy"; and trying to fulfill our formative mission statement better every day, in order to contribute to a just and respectful social coexistence. A permanent challenge for the university students of all times.