The Augustinian Recollect Luis Sáenz Ureta was born in Estollo (La Rioja, Spain) on October 9, 1860. When he was just under a month away from his majority, on September 1, 1878, the Augustinian Recollects settled less than two kilometers from his home, in what had been a Benedictine monastery in San Millán de la Cogolla.
The presence of those friars impressed Luis, who had grown accustomed since childhood to working in the fields, herding sheep, attending school, and participating in parish catechism. And in that gradual, daily contemplation and rumination on the possibility of becoming a friar himself, he eventually applied, unwittingly sparking a small revolution.
In Louis ‘s time, candidates for religious life usually began their vocational journey almost in early childhood. After studying at an Apostolic College, such as the one the Recollects had opened in San Millán, it was common for them to begin the novitiate at 16 years of age.
By the time the first local children entered the boarding school, Luis was already, by the standards of the time, a grown man. Moreover, lulled to sleep by the bleating of his sheep, he had studied to obtain his teaching certificate and even had a post at a school in the Laguardia region of Álava, 40 kilometers from Estollo.
On October 18, 1882, Toribio Minguella, commissioner and representative to the government authorities of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine of the Augustinian Recollects, requested from his superiors criteria for the admission to San Millán of “an applicant older than that stipulated by our laws, due to his special circumstances.” This applicant was Luis.
The Provincial Chapter of 1870 had regulated the admission of those who wished to become religious brothers, that is, without a vocation to the priesthood. They were required to be able to write correctly and have some knowledge of administration and arithmetic to take care of the material needs of the communities.
The response from the General Council of the Augustinian Recollects to Minguella was affirmative: Luis could be admitted. Furthermore, the parish priest of Estollo, Osorio Antonio Prado, a former Benedictine, gave his young parishioner a letter of recommendation.
He entered the Monteagudo convent (Navarra) as a postulant; later he began his novitiate and in 1884 made his profession as an Augustinian Recollect friar. At that time it was common to add a religious surname to one’s given name. Luis was the first of the Recollects to choose the Riojan devotion to Our Lady of Valvanera.
During his time as a postulant and novice, Luis had as his prior the only saintly Augustinian Recollect: Ezequiel Moreno. The connection between them was close, to the point that immediately after making his solemn profession, Luis joined the mission led by Ezequiel to restore the Colombian Recollection.
Their destination is the Recollect convent in the country, Our Lady of Candelaria, on the banks of the Gachaneca River, in the municipality of Ráquira, Boyacá province. The restoration missionaries arrive there in the first days of February 1889.
Luis dedicated himself to managing the agricultural and livestock farm, the source of food for the community. Years later, he added new investments in the Colombian capital, allowing the Recollect community to firmly establish itself in Colombia once again with sufficient resources.
He continued in this task of ensuring the lives of his brothers until, already an old man, he was assigned to Cali, where he died on November 6, 1943, at the age of 83. The national press, in an obituary, highlighted his personal, religious, and professional qualities.
The memory of all that Luis did for the people of Boyacá remained and did not fade with time. Thus, on May 23, 2004, the municipal corporation of San Miguel de Sema (Boyacá) created the Grand Order of San Miguel de Sema Luis Sáenz Ureta, as a heartfelt tribute in memory and honor of the illustrious religious figure.
It is a way of expressing gratitude that the construction of this town and municipality in 1915 was done on land donated by the religious community of the Augustinian Recollects, through Luis, on land belonging to the San José Estate located in the Quintoque district, at that time under the jurisdiction of Sema and now a municipality of its own.
