“I felt the call as soon as my wife died next to me,” says Inspector Sauras, who for eight years was the press officer at the Oviedo Police Station.
Grandfather José Mari will put on his cassock more than fifteen years after hanging up the badge and the pistol. Inspector Sauras, who was a national police officer for more than 40 years, eventually becoming press officer for the Oviedo Police Station between 1985 and 1993, he will be ordained a priest, at 72 years old, next May 28, Pentecost Sunday. The ex-agent, father of three sons and grandfather of two granddaughters ages 3 and 1 settled in the United States, he was already ordained as a deacon in 2017; In 2020, as soon as his wife died, he began to consider the possibility of fulfilling an old childhood wish and becoming a priest.
It was quarter past six in the morning of June 16 three years ago when Sauras’s life took a radical turn. “That’s it, Borja,” the ex-agent sighed, lying on the bed next to his wife, to tell his son, also lying in another part of the room, that his mother’s heart had stopped beating. Right at that moment, something got into his head. “Now you can be ordained as a priest”, he began to hear “like a constant hammering” in his mind. “I got very angry with myself, I had my wife, who was my life, lying down, and someone was telling me that I had to be a priest,” he says excitedly.
After the duel, the idea of opting for the priesthood did not stop persecuting this man from Madrid who arrived in Asturias in the early 1980s so that his wife, a purebred Oviedo native, could be close to her family. Sauras was one of the founders of the Brotherhood of Students some 15 years ago and for this reason, since then, he has attended mass in the parish of La Tenderina, to whose parish priest, Alberto Reigada, he first raised his intentions to be a priest after being widowed. “He is a wonderful person in whom I have full confidence, and he surprised me when he told me that he had always seen my profile to order me,” he explains.
However, the decision had not yet been made. Sauras took advantage of a deacons retreat in Covadonga to approach the archbishop, Jesús Sanz Montes. “I told him I wanted to have a conversation with him and he immediately invited me to make an appointment with his secretary,” she recalls. Finally, the meeting took place on a symbolic date. On July 22, 2022, just as it was the 45th anniversary of his wedding to Mari Carmen, the deacon received the last push he needed to go for the cassock. “Don Jesús told me in his office that if I took his course and a few more in the Seminary I could be a priest without any problem. It was like a gift, I didn’t believe he was serious. At my age and being a father and grandfather it was difficult to believe it”, he recalls with a satisfied face from a living room of the Metropolitan Seminary.
Now, barely two and a half months after being ordained in the Cathedral by the ArchbishopAlong with five other much younger seminarians, José Mari believes he has made one of the best decisions of his life. “When my wife died, I thought she would never be happy again, but now I am,” he admits without any doubt.
Far from throwing him back, his people have always been his main supports to pursue a vocation with deep roots. “When I was only eight years old, I already told my mother that I wanted to be a priest. She asked me to wait to live a little longer and the truth is that then I realized that I liked comics more than studying,” he recalls as a tribute to his mother, who died young, at 58 years of age, from whom she inherited her enormous religiosity and the occasional heart problem. “I have surgery, like her,” he adds.
Borja, Pablo and Carlos, his little ones who are 45, 41 and 40 years old, respectively, are the first to encourage him to reach his goal of reinforcing his dedication to God. “If you believe in it, go ahead,” the brothers agree. The first and third are close by, in Oviedo. The latter was the one who, almost a decade ago, discovered the existence of the figure of the deacon as a way of lending a hand, collaborating with some religious celebrations without the condition of celibacy. The second, Pablo, lives in the United States, “he even has nationality”, and is the one who has made him the grandfather of two granddaughters aged 3 and 1. “They will be able to boast of being a grandfather priest,” he jokes.
When asked what his life as a priest will be like, Sauras is blunt. “I will be where the Church wants me, that will be my happiness”, he guarantees, emphasizing that his dedication to the faith has been maximum for many years. “I have been assigned to the Los Arenales funeral home for five years and on some days I have come to officiate eight celebrations of the word,” he gives as an example of his intense pastoral work, which also leads him to celebrate some religious ceremonies, such as his status as a deacon. allows, in the parish of La Tenderina. All this is combined with studies at the Seminary. Even so, he takes time to eat with his children and some hobbies.
Of his life as a policeman, only memories remain. He joined the force in 1970 at only 19 years old after “approving the second” and two years later he was encouraged to complement his work with studies in Information Sciences at the Complutense, graduating from the second promotion of this center. In 1980 he moved to Asturias and these studies made the Superior Chief of that time appoint him as press officer. “I was there between 1985 and 1993 and the experience was positive,” says Inspector Sauras, who, after going through several more departments, took early retirement in 2007, at the age of 56, to focus more on his family and his enormous faith.