José Antonio Sayés Bermejo, a Navarrese priest, and theologian died on Tuesday, April 26 at the age of 78 at the clergy house El Buen Pastor in Pamplona from a neurological disease he had been suffering from for a few years.
He got his degree in theology at the Gregorian University of Rome, where he was born in Peralta. He was a professor at Burgos’ Faculty of Theology. He has written more than 40 novels.
In Peralta, the Sayés family is well-known and respected. José Antonio was the youngest of three brothers, all of whom are now deceased. His brother John was a priest as well, while Jesus worked as a butcher.
José Antonio Sayés was ordained as a priest in 1968, following his studies at the Pamplona Seminary. In 1972, he was a pupil of Joseph Ratzinger in a Eucharistic seminar. He worked on the new Catechism with Cardinal von Schönborn of Vienna.
For decades, he conducted youth camps in the Pyrenees, Asturias, Gredos, and throughout Europe, including the Alps and the Dolomites. “He loved the mountain: it brought him closer to God when he contemplated the beauty of creation, and he tried to transmit that to the people who accompanied him,” recalls Peraltés Héctor Garcia, who recalls that this coexistence brought “abundant vocations, to the priesthood, consecrated life, and also to marriage.”
