I met Hector (1945-2025) when I started working at the University in 2000. He was a friend of Mariano Artigas, who introduced me to him. But it was Carlos Pérez García, the first director of the Physics and Applied Mathematics department of the University, who met him at a professional congress in 1991 and with whom he became a great friend. Hector was intellectually restless and May '68 had happened invoice him: for him it was a crisis that left vital questions, and with respect to his faith, unresolved.

The meeting with Carlos was the beginning of a series of "coincidences" that Hector would later describe with the sense of humor that is so Argentine, I believe, and so much his own. Hector expressed his concerns to Carlos who told him about a priest named Mariano Artigas: he could help him find answers to his questions. On one of his fortnightly trips to San Luis, a city 800 km. away from Buenos Aires, he discovered in a bookshop two books that caught his attention and that turned out to be written by Mariano Artigas, the priest Carlos had mentioned. When he found out about them, he sent them to him as a gift. The two books, "Science, Reason and Faith" and "The Frontiers of Evolutionism", the first two written by Mariano, became faithful companions of his long trips to San Luis. A friendship with Mariano was already in the making. 

Carlos proposed to Hector to come to work in Pamplona. At that time he was in the United States, where he planned to stay. Hector, amused, describes Carlos's unrepayable proposal as follows: 

"Enthusiastic, [Carlos] told me that everything was still to be done [in the Physics department ] and that he needed me. His letter said: I need a physicist with a 'plumber'sprofile ' to set up a line of experimental research , from scratch and without resources. There is little reward.

Mari Carmen, his wife, helped him on this and many other occasions, as he said, to make the right decision. In 1993 he joined the University as Professor and Deputy Director of the department. Mariano was already in Pamplona where he was the first Dean of the Ecclesiastical School of Philosophy: the triangle was formed.

As can be expected, the work in the department in those early years was intense and left him little time for distractions. In 1996 he also took over the management of the department. 

During those years Carlos and Artigas, who also had a PhD in Physics, took advantage of walks and excursions to talk about physics and the relationship between science and faith. Hector had already befriended Mariano, talked with him about his concerns and shared with him his passion for physics and his search for truth in more global terms. However, he kept a certain distance from these conversations of his two friends: they were the germ of the group "Science, Reason and Faith" (CRYF) that was finally formed in 2002. Hector was fully in tune with the objectives of the group, but he did not yet see himself in a position to join it.

When, later, in an act of homage to Mariano, he explained what the CRYF was, he said: "Synthetically: the CRYF is a work initiated by Don Mariano Artigas and a group of professors of the University of Navarra, to try to harmonize scientific knowledge and the contents of the Catholic faith". This was exactly the staff process in which Hector had been involved for years. In that same act he also formulated the question that perhaps he had been trying to answer for some time: "can science, reason and faith be made compatible on a purely intellectual level, that is, by situating ourselves as external observers of the problem?" In his friends of the CRYF he found paths to draw his own answer. He said: "This conviction that science and faith are compatible, and furthermore, that a correct relationship between them can be important and fruitful for both, is at the foundation of the CRYF". His maturing staff led him to realize that answering the above question required overcoming a too short-sighted way of conceiving rationality. Even the question had to be broadened to be answered: "Can the richness and meaning of life be described by reason alone? Or, what else would it take to describe it?". He was personally discovering those elements that allow reason to reach that harmony he so longed for and which had to do with a well-understood faith and with love.

The fruitful triangle that was formed with his arrival in Pamplona underwent a sudden transformation that made it, in another way and paradoxically, deeper. 

Carlos Pérez died in a mountain accident on July 31, 2005. Mariano Artigas, don Mariano, as he called him, asked Hector to replace Carlos in the CRYF, he was then the only professional physicist in the CRYF. It was clear to him that he could not refuse such a request. He told it this way: 

"Don Mariano came to his wake to celebrate a funeral mass and at the end, he asked me to replace Carlos at the CRYF. I remember that, trying to resist, I answered him - but Don Mariano, ..., what can I do there, ... just go and give a testimony ...-. He looked at me seriously and told me: - look, don't worry, ... in these meetings we try to be very concrete, so the only thing I am afraid of, is exactly what you just told me - -. I accepted and began to attend the CRYF meetings, [...] And as I had promised, I tried not to give any testimony".

It became a partner the following month, in September 2005, and then as a partner member, or plenary session of the Executive Council member plenary session of the Executive Council, on May 23, 2006. But the changes did not stop there. On December 23, 2006, Mariano Artigas died of cancer, and on January 1, 2007, Héctor was appointed director of the group. His Degree of involvement and the maturity of his reflection during these years is shown by some of the titles of his writings and interventions that were published on the CRYF group 's website: 

• "Ciego en Granada", Published in the congress Identidad Cristiana de la Persona, University of Navarra, September 2006.

• "speech by Professor Héctor Mancini. Delivered at the ceremony in memoriam of Professor Mariano Artigas". (Pamplona, November 23, 2007) (from which we have taken many of the quotations used in this text).

• "The Splendor of Truth for a Christian Scientist",article published in Scripta Theologica in 2007).

• "Chaos, complexity and self-organisation" (CRYFseminar given in 2008).

• "No sólo pensando se aprende a pensar: claves del pensamiento científico", discussion paper at the IX conference on Pedagogical Innovation of Attendis (Granada, March 14, 2009).

• "The physics of complex systems: a new challenge for the Science and Faith dialogue?" (Pamplona, May 20, 2014).

He was director until 2010. His contribution was important because he had to replace and continue to promote the group in a difficult moment: death of its director and main architect of its foundation. He also knew how to do it in a kind and encouraging way.

His dialogic and passionate disposition, together with his facility with words, made him a great conversationalist. He was profound in his approaches and, as a good scientist, interested in the deep implications of the discipline he cultivated. He had many friends and was well liked: during his leadership he increased the issue of collaborating members. 

From the perspective we are adopting in this brief text, we could consider Hector's life as an empirical demonstration that, despite the difficulties, science and faith can be harmonized, even if it takes years. He traveled that road and enjoyed the harmony he managed to reach. He was aware that in this life the task would never be finished. His writings of the last years expressed in a very sincere way all that process of search and the landscapes to which he was leaning out full of astonishment. In the essay "Ciego en Granada" he alluded to the famous verse by Francisco de Icaza dedicated to the beauty of Granada. The verse sounds like this: 

Give him alms, woman,
there is nothing in life
like the pain of being
blind in Granada.

After putting in writing in that work his now mature understanding of what it meant to be a Christian for a scientist, he concluded the essay by prosaically correcting the poet, without taking away the poet's point, with this paragraph:

As demonstrated,
there is a greater sorrow;
to behold the universe
and not finding the Creator.

I like to think now of the joy that Hector must have experienced on finally contemplating that city of which Granada, in all its beauty, is only a pale reflection: the City of God.