On Thursday, August 29, Bishop Echevarría conferred priestly ordination on three deacons of the Prelature, in the Church of St. Michael, situated in a downtown area of Pamplona, Spain. The new priests are: Roberto Castillo Vargas, Pedro María de Diego Tellitu, and Juan Antonio Gil Tamayo.

Three days later, on September 1, Opus Dei’s Prelate conferred priestly ordination on another 37 faithful of the Prelature in a ceremony celebrated at the Shrine of Torreciudad. Their names are: Xavier Argelich i Casals, Mario Salvador Arroyo Martínez Fabre, Manuel Beunza Nuin, Santiago Blanco Rico, Pedro Miguel Boléo Tomé, Borja de León González, Oscar del Amo Palomero, Jude Idahosa Egharevba, Mario Filippa, Ignacio Font Boix, José Gorgas Longás, Ramón Goyarrola Belda, Alfonso Guerrero Suárez, Julián Gutiérrez Martí, Luis Guillermo Gutiérrez Upegui, Jean-Philippe Huet, Paul Douglas Kais, Esteban Llambías, Pedro Ignacio Lobo Zavalía, Pablo Lucena Molina, Eduardo Martínez Bernaola, Xavier Masdeu Mas, Martin John Miller, Pablo Molero Hernández, M. Eduardo Mora Altamirano, Manuel Moreno Araujo, Jorge Nava Rodríguez, Miguel de Sampaio Sotto-Mayor Negrão, Ramón Pereira Somoza, Pablo Requena Meana, Josep María Rovira Campos, Laurence Joseph Salud, Rafael Alberto Sevilla Valdivia, Juan Pablo Taberner Navarro, Derrick Ting Go (Barria), Richard James Umbers Lee and Wilhelmus Johan Georg Albert Veth.

The new priests are from Argentina, Ecuador, France, Italy Mexico, Nigeria, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, the United States, and Venezuela. Their ages range from 28 (Mario Arroyo) to 57 (Eduardo Martínez Bernaola).

In his homily on the 1st, the Prelate stressed that the ordination was taking place in the year of the centennial of Josemaría Escrivá’s birth and with his canonization rapidly approaching. “He had you very especially in mind, when he prayed for the holiness of his priest sons and for all the world’s priests.” At the end of his homily, he asked for their daily prayers that there be “many vocations of priests with a hunger for sanctity, which is indispensable for the administering of God’s forgiveness, and for satisfying the needs of all souls with the bread of God’s word and the Eucharistic bread.”

In the evening the Prelate held a get-together with the families and friends of the new priests, to whom he transmitted the Pope’s blessing.