Saint Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975)

The life of Josemaría Escrivá spans almost the entire Spanish and Roman twentieth century: a childhood marked by ruin and bereavement, a vocation born in the cold, a supernatural founding in 1928, the crossing of a civil war, then thirty years of governing from Rome a Work that had become worldwide.

Birth and family

Josemaría Escrivá is born on 9 January 1902 in Barbastro, a small town in the province of Huesca, Aragon^[4][5]. Baptized José María Mariano Escrivá Albás, he is the second of six children of José Escrivá, a textile merchant, and Dolores Albás, a deeply devout woman^[6]. The family is comfortably off and Christian; the child grows up in a simple, solid faith, received above all from his mother, for whom he will keep all his life a tender and concrete Marian devotion.

Early trials: bereavement and ruin

Josemaría's childhood is marked by a succession of bereavements: three of his younger sisters die one after another between 1910 and 1913^[7]. Soon after, the family business goes bankrupt; ruined, José Escrivá must leave Barbastro and settle in 1915 in Logroño, where he starts again modestly as a shop clerk^[8]. This trial, lived through without bitterness by a father who remains dignified and believing, will leave a lasting mark on his son: Escrivá will later speak of the sanctifying value of accepted setbacks and humble work.

The footprints in the snow: the awakening of a vocation

The inner turning point of his adolescence comes in Logroño, around 1917–1918. One winter day, Josemaría notices in the snow the barefoot prints of a Discalced Carmelite^[9]. This small fact — a religious walking barefoot in the cold for the love of God — overwhelms him: if others give so much to God, what can he give Him? Then comes the presentiment that God expects something of him, without his yet knowing what. He will soon begin to pray insistently with the request that became famous: "Domine, ut videam!" — "Lord, that I may see!", the prayer of the blind man in the Gospel^[10].

"Lord, that I may see! May what you want, and which I do not know, be accomplished." — youthful prayer of Josemaría Escrivá^[11]

Seminary and ordination (1925)

Convinced that the priesthood would make him more available to this still obscure will, he enters the seminary of Logroño, then the seminary of Saint Francis of Paola in Saragossa, where he is appointed prefect^[12]. On his father's advice, and with his agreement, he also undertakes law studies at the University of Saragossa. He is ordained a priest on 28 March 1925^[13]. His father dies shortly before, in 1924; the young priest then becomes the support of his mother, his sister Carmen, and his brother Santiago, who will long share his life.

He first exercises a brief rural ministry in Perdiguera, then settles in 1927 in Madrid, officially to complete a doctorate in law, in reality because he senses that his life will be decided there^[14]. In Madrid, he multiplies his ministry to the poor, the sick in hospitals, and the children of the suburbs, while earning his living as a tutor.

"Seeing" the Work

On 2 October 1928, the feast of the Guardian Angels, Josemaría is making a spiritual retreat with the Lazarists in Madrid. In the morning, as he rereads his spiritual notes, he claims to have suddenly "seen" what God had been asking of him for ten years: to found a path of holiness for ordinary Christians living in the heart of the world^[15]. As he meditates, the bells of a nearby church, Our Lady of the Angels, ring out — a detail he often recalled as the audible confirmation of this founding grace^[16].

"On 2 October 1928, the feast of the Guardian Angels, the Lord founded his Work: on that day, Josemaría received the illumination concerning the whole of Opus Dei." — official biographical notice^[17]

What he "sees" is not a new religious congregation, but something unheard of in the landscape of the time: a reality in which lay people, men and women, fully keeping their profession, their state of life, and their place in society, would seek Christian perfection precisely through that profession and that state. The very name of the institution — Opus Dei, the "Work of God" — stresses that Escrivá always considered himself its instrument, not its inventor.

The women's branch (1930)

At first, Escrivá thinks the Work will concern only men. But on 14 February 1930, as he celebrates Mass, he understands that God also wants to call women to it, with an equal vocation^[18]. The women's branch is founded that very day. For the time, this insistence on one same vocation to holiness for lay men and women, in professional work as in the home, is remarkably bold.

What is Opus Dei?

Opus Dei ("the Work of God") is neither a religious order, nor a party, nor a secret society: it is an institution of the Catholic Church whose purpose is to help Christians of every condition seek holiness in their ordinary life and bring the spirit of the Gospel into every area of society^[19]. This article treats the person and the spirituality of Escrivá; for the institution itself — its structure as a personal prelature, its government, its sociological controversies — the reader should turn to specialized resources.

The essential can be said in a few words: Escrivá refuses to cut the Christian life in two, with the "sacred" (Mass, prayer) on one side and the "profane" (work, family, leisure) on the other. For him, everything can and must become matter for holiness.

"You must now understand — with a new clarity — that God is calling you to serve Him in and from the civil, material, secular tasks of human life." — Josemaría Escrivá, Passionately Loving the World, 1967^[20]

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) strikes the young Work head-on. In Madrid, controlled by the Republican camp, religious persecution claims thousands of victims among the clergy: to be a priest is to risk death^[21]. Escrivá must go into hiding, changes refuge several times, finds shelter for a time in a psychiatric clinic where a doctor friend passes him off as a patient, then, for six months, in the consulate of Honduras^[22]. He clandestinely continues his ministry and supports his own followers.

In November 1937, after an exhausting and dangerous journey, he leaves Barcelona and crosses the Pyrenees on foot, through the snow-covered mountains, to reach Andorra (on the night of 1 to 2 December), then France, before joining the Nationalist zone via Burgos^[23]. During this flight, in the pillaged church of Pallerols de Rialb, he is said to have found on the ground a gilded wooden rose fallen from the retablo — a sign he kept as a confirmation of Providence in trial, on the night of 21 to 22 November^[24]. Once the war is over, he can resume and extend his apostolate; in 1939 he completes his doctorate in law in Madrid^[25].

On this chapter, historical honesty requires a nuance: like almost all the persecuted clergy, Escrivá takes refuge in the zone held by Franco's Nationalists, the only place where a priest could then survive and minister. This circumstance would later be exploited to present him as an ally of Franco's regime — an accusation discussed below.

Escrivá's most famous writing is Camino (The Way), a collection of 999 brief points — maxims, spiritual counsels, aphorisms — meant to nourish meditation and the examination of conscience^[26]. A first version appears as early as 1934 under the title Consideraciones espirituales (Cuenca); the definitive text, considerably expanded, is published in 1939 in Valencia under the title Camino^[27]. Translated into dozens of languages and distributed in millions of copies, the book has become a classic of twentieth-century lay spirituality.

Its originality lies in its tone: direct, incisive, with no artificial unction, it addresses a busy young professional and speaks to him of holiness as a demanding and joyful programme of life. In it are condensed all the intuitions of the Work:

"Add a supernatural motive to your ordinary professional work, and you will have sanctified it." — Josemaría Escrivá, Camino, no. 359^[28]

"You have the obligation to sanctify yourself. — You too. — Who thinks that this is a task reserved for priests and religious? To everyone, without exception, the Lord has said: 'Be perfect, as my heavenly Father is perfect.'" — Josemaría Escrivá, Camino^[29]

Escrivá's spiritual teaching cannot be understood as an abstract system, but as a light cast upon the most everyday life. Three lines sum it up: the universal call to holiness, the sanctification of work, and divine filiation.

The universal call to holiness

As early as 1928, well before the Second Vatican Council solemnly establishes this teaching in the constitution Lumen gentium (1964), Escrivá preaches that all the baptized — and not an elite of consecrated persons — are truly called to the fullness of the Christian life^[30]. This is no pious metaphor: it is a concrete call, addressed to the doctor, the factory worker, the father, the student. John Paul II will stress precisely this point at the canonization:

"Spread in society, without distinction of race, class, culture or age, the awareness that we are all called to holiness." — John Paul II, homily of the canonization, 6 October 2002^[31]

Sanctifying ordinary work

Work is, in Escrivá, the privileged place of this sanctification. Not in spite of work, nor by escaping from it, but through it: work well done, offered to God and accomplished with love, becomes a prayer, an offering, and an apostolate^[32]. Escrivá loved to say that the Christian must make a poem of his day, transforming the prose of everyday life into heroic verse:

"The Christian vocation consists in turning the prose of each day into alexandrines." — Josemaría Escrivá^[33]

Work is therefore neither a curse to be endured, nor a mere economic necessity: since the workshop of Nazareth, where Christ Himself worked with His hands, it is a path of communion with God. John Paul II said it again on the day of the canonization:

"Work, and any other activity, carried out with the help of Grace, are converted into instruments of daily sanctification." — John Paul II, 6 October 2002^[34]

Divine filiation

At the root of everything, Escrivá places divine filiation: the living awareness of truly being a son or daughter of God, through baptism, in Christ^[35]. This certainty, far from being an abstraction, is for him the source of peace, interior freedom, and the apostolic boldness of the Christian. The saint who knows himself to be a child of God no longer works as a slave or a hireling, but as a trusting child. John Paul II takes up this theme by quoting Saint Paul: "For all those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (Romans 8:14)^[36].

"Contemplatives in the midst of the world"

From this teaching flows an expression dear to Escrivá: the Christian is called to be "contemplative in the midst of the world". It is not a matter of fleeing earthly realities, but of passing through them with eyes fixed on God, of finding God in the profession, the street, the home, the office. The great homily he delivers on 8 October 1967, on the campus of the University of Navarre, before tens of thousands of people, is the manifesto of this spirituality of secularity:

"Know this well: there is something holy, something divine, hiding in the most ordinary situations, and it belongs to each one of you to discover it." — Josemaría Escrivá, Passionately Loving the World, 8 October 1967^[37]

"On the line of the horizon, my children, heaven and earth seem to meet. But where they are really united is in your hearts, when you live your ordinary life in a holy way." — Josemaría Escrivá, Passionately Loving the World^[38]

This spirituality of secularity — seeking God in the world, not outside it — echoes the impetus of many contemporary saints who, like Saint John Paul II, wanted to remind the laity of their proper vocation to sanctify temporal realities.

The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross (1943)

So that the Work may have priests formed within it, while respecting the lay character of most of its members, Escrivá founds on 14 February 1943 the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, closely united to Opus Dei^[39]. The first three priests from the Work, including the future successor Álvaro del Portillo, are ordained in 1944^[40].

Settling in Rome (1946) and approvals

In 1946, Escrivá settles in Rome to give Opus Dei its universal dimension and to obtain the Holy See's recognition^[41]. The institution receives the decretum laudis Primum Institutum (provisional approval) from Pope Pius XII on 24 February 1947 — three weeks after the constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia (2 February 1947) which created the category of secular institutes —, then the definitive approval on 16 June 1950^[42]. Escrivá completes his formation with a doctorate in theology at the Lateran University (1955)^[43]. From Rome, where he establishes the centre of the Work, he governs, travels, forms his spiritual sons and daughters, and watches Opus Dei take root on five continents.

The Second Vatican Council

Escrivá experiences the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) as a radiant confirmation of what he had been preaching since 1928. The dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium indeed establishes the universal call to holiness (chapter V), and the decree Apostolicam actuositatem affirms the value of the apostolate of the laity — two intuitions at the heart of Opus Dei^[44]. Far from any opposition to the Council, Escrivá recognizes in it the voice of the Church ratifying his charism.

On 26 June 1975, around noon, Josemaría Escrivá dies suddenly of cardiac arrest in his office in Rome, at 73^[45]. Opus Dei then counts some 60,000 members in 80 countries. His remains rest in the prelatic Church of Our Lady of Peace, on Viale Bruno Buozzi in Rome — first in the crypt, then, since the 1992 beatification, in an urn placed in the altar —, a place of pilgrimage visited today by many faithful^[46].

He is succeeded by his closest collaborator, Álvaro del Portillo (1914–1994), who will himself be beatified in 2014 — a sign of the spiritual fruitfulness of Escrivá's school^[47]. It is under del Portillo's government that John Paul II will erect Opus Dei as a personal prelature, through the apostolic constitution Ut sit of 28 November 1982 — the first, and for a long time the only, structure of this kind in the Church^[48]. This status was updated by Francis: the motu proprio Ad charisma tuendum of 14 July 2022 replaces articles V (attachment to the Dicastery for the Clergy) and VI (the prelate's annual report) of Ut sit^[49].

The recognized miracle

The cause for beatification, opened as early as 1981, retains the unexplained healing, in 1976, of Sister Concepción Boullón Rubio, suffering from a serious lipomatosis; the miracle is recognized by decree of 6 July 1991^[50]. Josemaría Escrivá is beatified on 17 May 1992, in Saint Peter's Square, by John Paul II, on the same day as the Sudanese religious Joséphine Bakhita, before some 300,000 people^[51]. For the canonization, the miracle retained is the healing, in November 1992, of Dr Manuel Nevado Rey, a Spanish doctor suffering from a chronic cancerous radiodermatitis of the hands — a condition then judged irreversible —, after prayer through Escrivá's intercession; the decree is approved by John Paul II on 20 December 2001^[52].

"The saint of the ordinary"

Ten years later, on 6 October 2002, John Paul II canonizes him in Saint Peter's Square, before some 300,000 people from all over the world^[53][54]. The next day, receiving the pilgrims who had come for the canonization, the pope sums up the new saint's mission in one sentence:

"Saint Josemaría was chosen by the Lord to proclaim the universal call to holiness and to point out that everyday life, ordinary activities, are a path to sanctification." — John Paul II, address to the pilgrims, 7 October 2002^[55]

Escrivá is entered in the Church calendar and celebrated on 26 June, the day of his birth into Heaven.

The Catholic angle of this article does not require hiding the serious criticisms raised by Escrivá and his Work. It only requires presenting them honestly and answering them.

A canonization too fast?

The speed of the process — beatified seventeen years after his death, canonized twenty-seven years after — struck observers; one journalist spoke of "one of the most controversial beatifications of modern times"^[56]. Voices inside the Vatican, notably the future Cardinal Luigi De Magistris, expressed reservations about the haste and about hearing critical testimonies^[57].

Answer: the speed is explained first by the 1983 reform of canonization procedures (the constitution Divinus perfectionis Magister), which simplified and accelerated all causes, not only Escrivá's. The process nevertheless followed the ordinary rules: diocesan inquiry, examination of the writings, positio, votes of theologians and cardinals, recognition of two miracles. The speed of a canonization does not measure the holiness of the person, but the intensity of his reputation and the solidity of the dossier.

Opus Dei: secrecy and control?

Opus Dei has often been accused of secrecy, of excessive control over its members, even of questionable recruitment methods — accusations revived by testimonies of former members and by recent critical works^[58]. Some of these criticisms target the institution and its governance after Escrivá, more than the person of the founder.

Answer: the Church has examined Escrivá's doctrine and writings without finding error in them; his books bear the required ecclesiastical approvals. Any excesses of this or that community cannot be deduced from the charism itself, which is explicitly a call to the freedom of the laity and to the sanctification of one's duty of state. Distinguishing the saintly founder from possible later institutional abuses is a matter of simple historical justice.

The relationship with Franco's regime

Escrivá has been reproached for a closeness to Franco's regime, several members of Opus Dei having served as ministers from 1957 onward^[59].

Answer: Escrivá always maintained that the Work does not engage in politics and leaves each of its members full freedom in temporal affairs; members of Opus Dei have moreover served in opposing political camps, in Spain as elsewhere. That Spaniards formed by him exercised responsibilities under Franco does not make the founder an actor of the regime: his message — lay holiness, freedom of conscience in temporal choices — is precisely the opposite of a political instrumentalization of faith.

The Vatican journalist John L. Allen Jr., author of a nuanced investigation into Opus Dei, concludes that many of the gravest accusations lack foundation and often come from personal adversaries^[60]. Historical truth requires holding both ends: neither blind hagiography, nor a biased prosecution.

Beyond polemics, the influence of Josemaría Escrivá on contemporary Catholicism is considerable. His teaching on the universal call to holiness was received by the Second Vatican Council and is now part of the ordinary language of the Church: the idea that everyone, wherever they are, can become a saint is now an established truth. Universities, schools, vocational training centres, and charitable works, on five continents, claim his spirit of work well done offered to God.

His message joins that of other great spiritual figures of the twentieth century — the holiness of "little things" of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, charity at the heart of the world of Saint Teresa of Calcutta — in one same conviction: God is found in the midst of life, not beside it.

"You must sanctify yourself in your life, by sanctifying your work and your surroundings: this profession or trade that fills your day [...], this home, this family. That is your place of holiness." — spirit of Josemaría Escrivá, after Passionately Loving the World^[61]

• Saint John Paul II — the pope who beatified him (1992) then canonized him (2002), and who made the universal call to holiness a central theme of his pontificate.
• Saint Thérèse of Lisieux — the "little way" of holiness in little things, the spiritual kin of the sanctification of ordinary work.
• Saint Teresa of Calcutta — holiness in the service of the poorest, another face of twentieth-century lay and active holiness.