John Paul II granted him the highest distinction that the Vatican grants to a layman
Almost seven thousand kilometers. That is the distance that separates, in a straight line and over the ocean, the UCAM and the parish in Hainamosa, in the Dominican Republic. But both buildings have the same builder: José Luis Mendoza Pérez. And barely five years separated one project from the other.
Mendoza was not always so well known. He began to study Medicine, although he did not get to graduate. He later graduated in Psychoanalysis and Group Psychotherapy at the Murcia Psychoanalytic Institute, among other studies.
For a decade and until 1989 he was director of the Spanish Southeast Rehabilitation Clinic. He had also founded the Institute of Health Sciences and Education in Cartagena in 1980, where he already taught studies authorized by the State.
Little did he know that his life would soon change. Mendoza, along with his wife Lola and his eight children, belonged to the Neocatechumenal Way at the beginning of the 90s. There he had developed an adult faith, of firm beliefs that he would defend until his death. That faith encouraged the couple to become a family on mission, one of those who travel to countries where it is necessary for the Catholic Church to flourish.
An all-powerful Cardinal Ratzinger came to visit UCAM before becoming Pope
They were sent in 1991 by Pope John Paul II to Santo Domingo, a country where they would remain for three years in areas of extreme poverty and violence. Already then he showed signs of his management capacity by promoting a seminary and the construction of a parish. Something that cost him death threats, by the way.
Three years later he returned to Murcia with an idea that everyone called hallucinatory: to create a Catholic university in the Region. That afternoon in the Murcian parish of San Pablo is still remembered when, in front of hundreds of future students and many parents, he explained his project. Many discovered that day his absolute decision and his impetus in defending what he believed in.
The initiative had the support of the then Bishop Javier Azagra Labiano, who canonically erected the UCAM on November 13, 1996. The San Antonio Catholic University was born. But it was born among the controversy.
The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, together with José Luis Mendoza, in the year 2002. /
The beginnings were not easy. First, because the banking entities did not see very clearly (or did not want to see) the possibility of business. Not to mention that the historic monastery where the new university was located was almost a ruin. Or the question of the validation of university degrees, that was another. And later the icing on the cake: when Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Plá discussed the ownership of the center, until then in charge of the San Antonio Foundation.
It was the most bitter period for Mendoza. And the confrontation filled pages and pages of newspapers. In the end, the president won. Reig Plá was transferred from the Diocese for not obeying his superiors, including Cardinal Rouco, another of the supporters of the Cartagena businessman.
The new Bishop José Manuel Lorca Planes and Mendoza signed a document on October 2, 2009 specifying that the UCAM was created at his request and that the property and ownership corresponds to the Foundation he presided over. The document was drawn up, neither more nor less, than by the Secretary of State of the Holy See.
Rome even agreed with him in the controversy with Bishop Reig Plá over the ownership of the university
It is clear that the president’s relationship with the Catholic Church was always very close. The Vatican elite has passed through the congresses that the UCAM has organized since its foundation, mostly of an international nature, including an all-powerful Cardinal Ratzinger who would later become Pope. But before he was stunned by the beauty of the Salzillos.
The visits in Rome to his predecessor, John Paul II, were continuous while the Pontiff lived, in many cases accompanied by one of his fourteen children. This Pope would name him consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family on August 6, 2004. Just a few months later, in December, Mendoza would announce the creation of the John Paul II International Institute of Charity and Volunteering. Today, a huge bronze sculpture of this Pope presides over the entrance to the Los Jerónimos Campus.
Rome would distinguish Mendoza with the highest decoration that the Holy Father has to recognize a faithful layman: the Distinction of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great. The writer Chesterton and the conductor Ricardo Muti belonged to this Order, among others.
The delivery was made solemnly on June 13, 2007 and was also received by his wife, the authentic and discreet counterpoint, held back on so many occasions, that the president of the UCAM had. Again, in 2011, he was also a recipient of the 2011 Giuseppe Sciacca International Prize, from the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome. The relationship was maintained with the current Pope Francis, who also received him on various occasions.
Mendoza, apart from countless aid to charitable causes, among which is the support of entire convents, did not turn its back on the Nazarene world either. His money made it possible to embellish processions with liturgical trousseaus or promote the restoration of chapels. This is the case of the Chapel of the Fallen of the California Brotherhood of Cartagena or the Chapel of the Virgen de la Piedad, in the parish of the same name.
Perhaps his greatest legacy is the purchase and transfer of the 600 pieces that make up the valuable Neapolitan nativity scene of the brothers Emilio and Carmelo García de Castro. Mendoza donated it to the Salzillo Museum, where it can be admired. It is not surprising, therefore, that he treasured dozens of fellowship distinctions and pronounced a few proclamations. In 2012 he was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the Redemptoris Mater Theology Faculty of Lima (Peru).
With his death, one of the people from Cartagena who has had the greatest relationship with the Vatican throughout history disappears. Only surpassed by the person who was the spokesman for Pope John Paul II: Joaquín Navarro Valls. Both are only shadowed by the Count of Floridablanca, ambassador to the Holy City in 1772. To each his own.
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