Now that we have an Augustinian pope, Leo XIV, who reflects in his shield the burning heart of St. Augustine, it is a good time to reread the extraordinary book of "Confessions" of St. Augustine.
I would like to recall the magnificent edition prepared by Pedro Antonio Urbina for Palabra editions, which provides many Christians with a personal encounter with one of the most important Church Fathers in history.
When the Holy Father Leo XIV mentioned on the day of his election in St. Peter's Square that he was a son of St. Augustine, he was calling all Christians to a new conversion, a conversion to love, as did the saint of Hippo.
The first messages of the new Holy Father were, as we all remember, a call to the unceasing search for peace in the world. Certainly, as St. Josemaría Escrivá said, for there to be peace in the world there must be peace in consciences, and for this there is nothing better than the permanent conversion of each one of us to love.
Precisely, I wish to present now the posthumous work of the former professor of communication at the University of Navarra, the Valencian Esteban López Escobar (1941-2025), who undertook this last work of his life with great illusion and a galloping leukemia that killed him only to deprive him of seeing the book published in the street, because a few weeks before his death he had given us the manuscript perfectly revised.
The Ortiz de Landázuri couple
When a year before I went to him, as a friend of many years in Pamplona, and as diocesan postulator of the cause of beatification and canonization of the Servants of God, I was able to see him, as a friend of many years in Pamplona, and as the diocesan postulator of the cause of beatification and canonization of the Servants of God. Laura Busca Otaegui and Eduardo Ortíz de Landázuiri, we could not have predicted this fatal outcome.
In fact, Esteban had already prepared two editions of a biographical book on Eduardo Ortiz de Landázuri, the former professor of pathology at the Faculty of Medicine, dean and vice-rector of the University of Navarra. The admiration and friendship they had during his lifetime allowed him to enter deeply into Eduardo's soul and family. Those semblances were reprinted several times.
In the course of time and life, Esteban had known and treated his wife Laura, a Basque from Zumarraga, always smiling, a pharmacist, mother of seven children and an accomplished cook.
With this background and the perspective that the diocesan investigation had already been closed and that both processes, Eduardo's and Laura's, had entered the Roman phase, Esteban decided to undertake the work.
The beatification process
Let us remember that the "Positio" on the life, virtues and reputation for sanctity of these Servants of God had already been delivered to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, and, therefore, now it only remained to await the judgment of the Church and, in the meantime, to continue disseminating the prayer card for private devotion.
Precisely in the print for private devotion Laura and Eduardo appear together in a photograph taken in Granada when they were a young married couple who were joyfully welcoming their first children and, while Eduardo was making his way in the practice of medicine and university teaching.
Esteban was struck by the fact that she told him that they appeared together, since both were in the process of beatification and, therefore, the graces and favors that God Our Lord in his particular providence decided to give us, would be attributed to the intervention of the couple.
Therefore, if one day a miracle were to occur, by means of that event, both could be beatified or canonized. That is to say that in the causes of marriage the phenomenon occurs that with one miracle you have two saints.
The question is obvious: why does the Church demand two rigorous processes of virtue separately for the two spouses and, on the other hand, why with only one miracle for beatification and another for canonization, would we obtain two saints? The answer given by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints is quite simple: marriage is a "theological place".
This is the origin of this biographical sketch of Laura and Eduardo's marriage and, in a way, also of the tribute to a professor, writer and journalist such as Esteban López Escobar.
The proposal I made to Estaban was to write the story of the love between Laura, Eduardo and God, for as we know, married love is a matter of three, since all human love is based on divine love: "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Mt 18:20).
A careful reading of this work shows how human love is transformative. Indeed, the lives of Eduardo and Laura and the intertwining of their desires for mutual love and self-giving appear throughout this book in the form of the children who are the crystallization of the spouses' love in a new life with God's grace.
Likewise, in a very delicate way, Esteban Lopez Escobar relates the becoming of Christian virtues; the conjunction of God's grace and the free correspondence of each one of them and of both of them to reflect in their lives God's gift of the beatitudes and the procession of moral virtues.
It is true that men are not born saints, but that they become saints through God's grace and personal effort, but it is also completely true that without God's grace we can do nothing. In fact, the anecdotes described in this book show how this couple, not only were happy and created a bright and joyful home, but were transformed by God's grace.
Laura and Eduardo. A love story
