Buenos Aires, Argentina, Apr 12, 2018 / 18:00 pm
Before discovering their vocations, Fr. Javier Olivera and Sister Marie de la Sagesse were engaged and planning their wedding. God had other plans.
Speaking to ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish language sister agency, Fr. Olivera said that they both grew up in Catholic families and that "our parents knew each other when they were young." They saw each other frequently when they were children.
"I had really left the practice of religion. When I was 19, I came back from a back-packing trip to Peru and I met her. I asked her if she believed in virginity until marriage, because for me this was kind of an invention by the Church. She laid out the principles so well about purity, from faith and reason, that it impacted me. I met a woman who knew how to defend what she believed and who was at the same time very intelligent," Olivera commented.
Soon after that conversation, they began dating. At that time both of them were studying law. He was at the National University at Buenos Aires and she was at the National University at La Plata.