Saint Josemaría Escrivá

The masterwork of Josemaría Escrivá is the foundation of Opus Dei ("Work of God"). On October 2, 1928, in Madrid, during a spiritual retreat, he declared that he had received from God the light regarding the mission that awaited him: to open a new path in the Church intended to promote, among the faithful of all conditions, the pursuit of holiness and the exercise of the apostolate through professional work and the ordinary circumstances of existence. On February 14, 1930, he understood that this mission also extended to women. At the heart of his teaching is the conviction that every honest human activity can become a place of encounter with God and a means of sanctification, without changing one's state of life. He spread this spirituality through his preaching and his writings, the most famous of which, The Way (Camino), published first in 1934 under the title Spiritual Considerations and then in its definitive version in 1939, is a collection of brief points for meditation translated into many languages. He also published Furrow, The Forge, as well as collections of homilies such as Christ is Passing By and Friends of God.

The spirituality of Josemaría Escrivá is centered on the idea that holiness is not reserved for an elite, but constitutes a universal vocation, accessible to every Christian in their state of life, whether they be a laborer, teacher, mother, or civil servant. He teaches that professional work, performed with competence and integrity, can be offered to God and become prayer and apostolate. To this doctrine of the sanctification of work, he associates the notion of "unity of life," which invites one not to separate faith from daily activity, but to integrate prayer, work, and family life into a single reality oriented toward God. This intuition, long before the Second Vatican Council, anticipates the conciliar teaching on the universal call to holiness and the role of the laity in the Church. Renowned for his life of intense prayer, his sense of forgiveness, and his divine filiation lived with confidence, he attracted many disciples during his lifetime. After his death, the postulation of his cause received thousands of testimonies of graces attributed to his intercession, a sign of the reputation of holiness that followed him.

The cause for the beatification of Josemaría Escrivá opened a few years after his death, supported by numerous testimonies of graces received through his intercession. Pope John Paul II beatified him on May 17, 1992, in Saint Peter's Square in Rome, during a ceremony in which the Sudanese religious sister Josephine Bakhita was also beatified. The miracle accepted for the beatification was the healing, deemed inexplicable, of a Spanish religious sister, Sister Concepción Boullón Rubio, who suffered from lipomatosis. The canonization took place on October 6, 2002, also presided over by John Paul II in Saint Peter's Square, before a considerable crowd. The miracle approved for the canonization was the healing of Dr. Manuel Nevado Rey, a Spanish physician suffering from chronic cancerous radiodermatitis, a healing declared scientifically inexplicable by the medical board of the Vatican. His liturgical feast is set for June 26, the anniversary of his death. He is inscribed as an optional memorial in the Church's calendar.

The legacy of Josemaría Escrivá continues primarily through Opus Dei, which he led until his death and which has spread across five continents. In 1982, Pope John Paul II established Opus Dei as a personal prelature, a novel canonical status that made it the first and for a long time the only institution of this type in the Catholic Church. Escrivá's message on the universal call to holiness and the sanctification of ordinary work has exerted a notable influence on the spirituality of the laity in the 20th century. His writings, particularly The Way, have been translated into several dozen languages and distributed in millions of copies. His teaching has also sparked debates, with some critics pointing to the controversial nature of the institution. His relics rest in the prelatic church of Our Lady of Peace, at the central headquarters of Opus Dei in Rome, a place of pilgrimage. Having suffered from diabetes himself, he is invoked as the patron of people with diabetes.