Saint Josemaría Escrivá

Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer was a Spanish priest, the founder of Opus Dei and of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross. Throughout his life he preached that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary work and daily duties can become a path to God. The Church remembers him on June 26.

He was born on January 9, 1902, in Barbastro, Spain, the second of six children. His parents, José Escrivá and María Dolores Albás, were devout Catholics who taught him the faith above all by their own example. Between 1910 and 1913 his three younger sisters died, and in 1914 the family lost its fortune and a year later moved to Logroño.

In the winter between 1917 and 1918 he saw there, in the snow, the footprints of a barefoot Carmelite. He thought that if others sacrificed so much for God, he too ought to offer Him something. Without yet knowing exactly what God wanted of him, he decided to become a priest. He studied at the seminary in Logroño and from 1920 in Saragossa, where on his father’s advice he also took up the study of law. He was ordained a priest in Saragossa on March 28, 1925.

In 1927 he moved to Madrid to earn a doctorate in law, and there he devoted much time to the sick, the poor and children in the outlying districts. On October 2, 1928, as he himself put it, he “saw” the mission God wished to entrust to him. That day Opus Dei was born: a new path in the Church on which people from every walk of life were to seek holiness and carry out the apostolate by sanctifying ordinary work in the midst of the world. On February 14, 1930, he understood that the Work was to include women as well. In 1934 he published the first version of the book “The Way,” which later appeared in dozens of languages.

The civil war that broke out in Spain in 1936 brought violent persecution of the Church in Madrid. Josemaría persevered in prayer, penance and apostolic work. On February 14, 1943, he founded the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross within Opus Dei. In 1946 he settled in Rome to prepare the papal approval of the Work. Pius XII granted it a decree of praise in 1947 and final approval on June 16, 1950.

From Rome he led the Work as it spread to many countries, and he made catechetical journeys through Europe and Latin America. He died of a heart attack on June 26, 1975, in his study in Rome. Opus Dei then had more than 60,000 members on five continents. His body rests in Rome in the prelatic church of Our Lady of Peace. In 1982 the Church gave the Work its definitive juridical form as a personal prelature.

John Paul II beatified him on May 17, 1992, and on October 6, 2002, in Saint Peter’s Square, declared him a saint. The next day the pope said that God had chosen him to proclaim the universal call to holiness, and that he could be called the saint of ordinary life.