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On March 17, Bishop Echevarría left Rome for Jerusalem where he stayed for a few days with the faithful of Opus Dei living there and prayed for peace in the Holy Land.
On the morning of the eighteenth, after celebrating Holy Mass in the Holy Sepulcher, the Prelate of Opus Dei visited the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Apostolic Nuncio. Later that same day, he prayed the Rosary in the Basilica of the Dormition and also went to the Cenacle, to the Church of St. Anne and to the Garden of Olives.
On the Feast of Saint Joseph he spent some time with the faithful of the Prelature and Cooperators of Jerusalem and also visited Emmaus, where he was able to pray the Rosary in the so-called «house of Cellophane» and in the Pretorium of Jerusalem. On the 20th he returned to the Garden of Olives to celebrate Holy Mass.
He returned to Rome by plane from Tel Aviv, on the morning of March 21.
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Bishop Echevarría also traveled to Seville at the invitation of Archbishop Carlos Amigo Vallejo, to participate from April 8 to 13 in the Thirteenth Symposium of the Academy of Ecclesiastical History of Spain and America, entitled «Witnesses of the Twentieth Century, Teachers of the Twenty-First Century.» The Symposium, after some opening words by the Archbishop of Seville, included presentations by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, by Bishop Rafael Palmero Ramos of Palencia, and by other academics who spoke about various persons who lived in the last century and who have been beatified or canonized, or whose cause has begun. The presentation of the Prelate of Opus Dei was entitled «Passionately Loving the World: Blessed Josemaría Escrivá.»
The Symposium, which was closed by the Papal Nuncio to Spain, Bishop Manuel Monteiro de Castro, was also attended by Archbishop Antonio Montero of Mérida-Badajoz, and by the Vicar Generals of various dioceses, and by academic and cultural leaders of Seville.
On the sixth and seventh, Bishop Echevarría took part in get-togethers with a large group of people from Western Andalusia and Extremadura, one of them for more than ten thousand persons, including faithful of the Prelature and their families, Cooperators, and many others who take part in the various formational activities of the Prelature. He exhorted them, among other things, to undertake a new conversion each day, as a way of preparing for the approaching canonization of Blessed Josemaría Escrivá. He also had a chance to visit the work being carried out to install a new reredos in the Church of El Señor San José, which was entrusted to priests of the Prelature some years ago by the Archbishop of Seville.
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