Josemaría Escrivá

Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás was born on 9 January 1902 in Barbastro, in the province of Huesca in Aragon, Spain, the second of six children of José Escrivá y Corzán, a textile merchant, and María de los Dolores Albás y Blanc. The family was devoutly Catholic. In the 1910s the family business failed, bringing financial hardship, and they moved to Logroño, where Josemaría completed his secondary education. An episode in which he saw the bare footprints of a Carmelite friar in the snow is traditionally associated with the awakening of his priestly vocation. He entered the seminary, studying first in Logroño and then at Zaragoza, while also reading civil law at the University of Zaragoza. He was ordained a priest on 28 March 1925. After brief pastoral assignments in rural parishes of the diocese of Zaragoza, he went to Madrid, where he served as chaplain to a foundation for the sick and the poor, continued his legal studies, and began apostolic work among university students.

On 2 October 1928, during a spiritual retreat in Madrid, Escrivá founded Opus Dei (Latin for Work of God), convinced that he had received a divine inspiration to remind Christians that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary professional work, family life, and civic duties can be a path of sanctification. In February 1930 he understood that this vocation was also open to women, and a women's section of Opus Dei was begun. The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 interrupted the Work's early growth. As a priest in Republican Madrid he faced mortal danger from anticlerical violence; he lived in hiding, including for a time in a psychiatric clinic and in a diplomatic residence, before crossing the Pyrenees into the Nationalist zone in late 1937. After the war he rebuilt and expanded Opus Dei in Spain. In 1943 he founded the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, closely united to Opus Dei, for the formation and ministry of priests. From 1946 he resided principally in Rome in order to obtain pontifical approval and to establish the institution's central government. Successive Holy See approvals followed during his lifetime; after his death, Pope John Paul II erected Opus Dei as a personal prelature in 1982.

Escrivá traveled widely in Europe and the Americas to encourage members and to promote the apostolate of sanctifying ordinary life. He wrote spiritual works that circulated far beyond Opus Dei, most notably The Way (Camino), a collection of short points for meditation first developed in the 1930s, as well as Furrow, The Forge, and collections of homilies such as Christ Is Passing By and Friends of God. His preaching stressed divine filiation (the Christian's identity as a child of God), unity of life, personal freedom, and the value of secular professions lived in the middle of the world. He was a diocesan (secular) priest, not a member of a religious order; he never married and had no children. For many years he suffered from diabetes mellitus.

On 26 June 1975 he died suddenly in Rome of cardiac arrest. He was buried in the crypt of what became the prelatic church of Our Lady of Peace at Villa Tevere, the central headquarters of Opus Dei in Rome; after his beatification his remains were placed under the altar of that church. The cause for his canonization was opened after his death. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 17 May 1992 and canonized him on 6 October 2002 in Saint Peter's Square. His liturgical memorial is observed on 26 June. Popular devotion has associated him especially with Opus Dei and with people who suffer from diabetes. His life and teaching remain closely identified with the claim that holiness is not reserved to clergy or consecrated religious but is accessible in ordinary work and daily circumstances.