Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás (9 January 1902 – 26 June 1975) was a Spanish Catholic priest who founded Opus Dei, an organization of laypeople and priests dedicated to the principle of everyday holiness. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
Escrivá studied for the priesthood in Logroño and Zaragoza and in 1925 was ordained in the latter. He then moved to Madrid, where he pursued doctoral studies in civil law at the Central University. After the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Escrivá fled from Madrid, via Andorra and France, to the city of Burgos, which at the time served as the headquarters of the rebel Nationalist forces under General Francisco Franco. After the military triumph of the Nationalists, Escrivá returned to Madrid and completed his doctorate in 1939. His principal work was the initiation, government and expansion of Opus Dei. His best-known publication is The Way, which has been translated into 43 languages and has sold several million copies. Escrivá settled in Rome in 1946. In 1955, he received a doctorate in theology from the Lateran University.
Escrivá and Opus Dei have attracted attention and controversy within the Catholic Church and in the worldwide press, including allegations of secrecy, elitism, cult-like practices, collaboration with the dictatorship of General Franco in Spain (1936–1975) and other right-wing political causes, as well as financial malfeasance. After his death, Escrivá's beatification and canonization in 2002 also generated considerable comment and contention. Several former members of Opus Dei and associates of Escrivá have publicly questioned his personal character and holiness.
Sources close to Opus Dei, and some independent journalists such as the Vatican analyst John L. Allen Jr., have argued that many of those accusations are unproven and originate with Escrivá's personal enemies. John Paul II and other Catholic leaders have endorsed Escrivá's teachings on the universal call to holiness, the role of the laity, and the sanctifying effect of ordinary work. According to Allen, among Catholics, Escrivá is "reviled by some and venerated by millions more".
Biography
Early life
José María Mariano Escrivá y Albás was born to José Escrivá y Corzán and his wife, María de los Dolores Albás y Blanc on 9 January 1902, in the small town of Barbastro, in Huesca, Spain, the second of six children and the first of two sons. José Escrivá was a merchant and a partner in a textile company that eventually went bankrupt, forcing the family to relocate in 1915 to the city of Logroño, in the northern province of La Rioja, where he worked as a clerk in a clothing store. Young Josemaría first felt that "he had been chosen for something", it is reported, when he saw footprints left in the snow by a monk walking barefoot.
With his father's blessing, Escrivá prepared to become a priest of the Catholic Church. He studied first in Logroño and then in Zaragoza, where he was ordained as deacon on Saturday, 20 December 1924. He was ordained a priest, also in Zaragoza, on Saturday, 28 March 1925. Beginning in 1922, he also studied law at the University of Zaragoza, receiving the corresponding licenciate degree in 1927.
After a brief appointment to a rural parish in Perdiguera, Escrivá went to Madrid in 1927 to pursue a doctorate in civil law at the Central University. In Madrid, Escrivá found employment as a private tutor and as a chaplain to the Foundation of Santa Isabel, which comprised the royal Convent of Santa Isabel and a school managed by the Little Sisters of the Assumption.
Mission as the founder of Opus Dei A prayerful retreat helped him to discern more definitely what he considered to be God's will for him, and, on 2 October 1928, he "saw" Opus Dei (), a way by which Catholics might learn to sanctify themselves by their secular work. He founded it in 1928, and Pius XII gave it final approval in 1950. According to the decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which contains a condensed biography of Escrivá, "[t]o this mission he gave himself totally. From the beginning his was a very wide-ranging apostolate in social environments of all kinds. He worked especially among the poor and the sick languishing in the slums and hospitals of Madrid."
During the Spanish Civil War, Escrivá fled from Madrid, which was controlled by the anti-clerical Republicans, via Andorra and France, to the city of Burgos, which was the headquarters of General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces. After the war ended in 1939 with Franco's victory, Escrivá was able to resume his studies in Madrid and complete a doctorate in law, for which he submitted a thesis on the historical jurisdiction of the abbess of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas. (available in Italian and Spanish)
The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, affiliated with Opus Dei, was founded on Sunday, 14 February 1943. Escrivá relocated to Rome in 1946. The decree declaring Escrivá "Venerable" states that "in 1947 and on Monday, 16 June 1950, he obtained approval of Opus Dei as an institution of pontifical right. With tireless charity and operative hope he guided the development of Opus Dei throughout the world, activating a vast mobilization of lay people ... He gave life to numerous initiatives in the work of evangelization and human welfare; he fostered vocations to the priesthood and the religious life everywhere... Above all, he devoted himself tirelessly to the task of forming the members of Opus Dei."
Later years
According to some accounts, at the age of two he suffered from a disease, perhaps epilepsy so severe that the doctors expected him to die soon, but his mother had taken him to Torreciudad, where the Aragonese locals venerated a statue of the Virgin Mary (as "Our Lady of the Angels"), thought to date from the 11th century. Escrivá recovered and, as the director of Opus Dei during the 1960s and 1970s, promoted and oversaw the design and construction of a major shrine at Torreciudad. The new shrine was inaugurated on 7 July 1975, soon after Escrivá's death, and to this day remains the spiritual center of Opus Dei, as well as an important destination for pilgrimage."Our Lady of Torreciudad", official Opus Dei website on Escrivá By the time of Escrivá's death in 1975, the members of Opus Dei numbered some 60,000 in 80 countries."Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 1 Feb. 2012. As an adult, Escrivá suffered from type 1 diabetes and, according to some sources, also epilepsy.Jesús Ynfante, El santo fundador del Opus Dei, see chapter 9 (in Spanish)
In 1950, Escrivá was appointed an Honorary Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius XII, which allowed him to use the title of Monsignor. In 1955, he received a doctorate of theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He was a consultor to two Vatican congregations (the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities and the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of the Code of Canon Law) and an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) confirmed the importance of the universal call to holiness, the role of the laity, and the Mass as the basis of Christian life.
In 1948, Escrivá founded the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Crucis (Roman College of the Holy Cross), Opus Dei's educational center for men, in Rome. In 1953 he founded the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Mariae (Roman College of Saint Mary) to serve the women's section (these institutions are now joined into the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.) Escrivá also established the University of Navarre, in Pamplona, and the University of Piura (in Peru), as secular institutions affiliated with Opus Dei. Escrivá died of cardiac arrest on 26 June 1975, aged 73. Three years after Escrivá died, the then Cardinal Albino Luciani (later Pope John Paul I) celebrated the originality of his contribution to Christian spirituality.A. Luciani, "Cercando Dio nel lavoro quotidiano", in Il Gazzettino, Venice, 25 July 1978
Personality and attitudes
Attitudes in general One of the persons who knew Escrivá best was the Bishop of Madrid, where Opus Dei was initiated, Bishop Leopoldo Eijo y Garay, for Escrivá would visit and report to him quite frequently and the two established a very strong friendship. In a 1943 report to Rome, the bishop stated: "The distinctive notes of his character are his energy and his capacity for organization and government; with an ability to pass unnoticed. He has shown himself most obedient to the Church hierarchy -- one very special hallmark of his priestly work is the way he fosters, in speech and in writing, in public and in private, love for Holy Mother Church and for the Roman Pontiff." Bishop Eijo y Garay wrote to the Jesuit Provincial of Toledo, Carlos Gomez Martinho, S.J. in 1941: "Fr. Escrivá is an exemplary priest, chosen by God for apostolic enterprises; humble, prudent, self-sacrificing in work, docile to his bishop, of outstanding intelligence and with a very solid spiritual and doctrinal formation." Eijo y Garay told an officer of the Falange that "[T]o think that Fr. Josemaría Escrivá is capable of creating anything secret is absurd. He is as frank and open as a child!"
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, founder of "logotherapy", and a Nazi concentration camp survivor, met Escrivá in Rome in 1970 and later wrote of "the refreshing serenity which emanated from him and warmed the whole conversation", and "the unbelievable rhythm" with which his thought flowed, and finally "his amazing capacity" for getting into "immediate contact" with those with whom he was speaking. Frankl went on: "Escrivá evidently lived totally in the present moment, he opened out to it completely, and gave himself entirely to it."The Tablet: How Escrivá changed my life , 19 January 2002Joan Baptista Torelló, Recuerdo de Víktor E. Frankl (in Spanish), Archivo histórico, 48 (286), septiembre/octubre 2006 According to Álvaro del Portillo, who was Escrivá's closest collaborator for many years, there was one basic quality of Escrivá "that pervaded everything else: his dedication to God, and to all souls for God's sake; his constant readiness to correspond generously to the will of God."
Pope Paul VI summarized his opinion of what he termed the "extraordinariness" of Escrivá's sanctity in this way: "He is one of those men who has received the most charisms (supernatural gifts) and have corresponded most generously to them." John L. Allen Jr., writing after watching some movies on the founder of Opus Dei in 2005, "The first impression one gets from watching Escrivá 'live'", "is his effervescence, his keen sense of humor. He cracks jokes, makes faces, roams the stage, and generally leaves his audience in stitches in off-the-cuff responses to questions from people in the crowd."Mitch Finley review of Opus Dei by John L. Allen Jr. at explorefaith.org, 2005 Critics, such as Spanish architect Miguel Fisac, who was one of the earliest members of Opus Dei and who associated with Escrivá for nearly twenty years before ending his relation with Escrivá and Opus Dei, have given a very different description of Escrivá as a pious but vain, secretive, and ambitious man, given to private displays of violent temper, and who demonstrated little charity towards others or genuine concern for the poor. According to British journalist Giles Tremlett, "biographies of Escrivá have produced conflicting visions of the saint as either a loving, caring charismatic person or a mean-spirited, manipulative egoist".Giles Tremlett, "Sainthood beckons for priest linked to Franco", The Guardian (UK), 5 October 2002. French historian Édouard de Blaye has referred to Escrivá as a "mixture of mysticism and ambition".
Towards God
Prayer