Josemaría Escrivá

Life events

1. Born — 1902

   José María Mariano Escrivá y Albás was born on 9 January 1902 in Barbastro, Huesca, Spain, the second of six children of José Escrivá y Corzán, a textile merchant, and María de los Dolores Albás y Blanc.

2. Ordained — 1925

   Escrivá was ordained a priest on 28 March 1925 in Zaragoza, having been ordained deacon there on 20 December 1924; he had also studied law at the University of Zaragoza since 1922, receiving his law licentiate in 1927.

3. Other — 1928

   On 2 October 1928, during a prayerful retreat in Madrid, Escrivá articulated the founding vision of Opus Dei — a path by which Catholics might sanctify themselves through their ordinary secular work; Pope Pius XII gave the organization final approval on 16 June 1950.

4. Exiled — 1936

   After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Escrivá fled Republican-controlled Madrid via Andorra and France to Burgos, then the headquarters of General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces; he returned to Madrid after the Nationalist victory in 1939 and completed his civil law doctorate.

5. Wrote — 1939

   The first edition of Escrivá's *The Way* was completed in Burgos and published in Valencia in 1939, bearing the dateline 'Año de la Victoria' and a prologue by Bishop Xavier Lauzurica; the book has since been translated into 43 languages and sold several million copies.

6. Other — 1946

   Escrivá relocated to Rome in 1946, where he oversaw the worldwide expansion of Opus Dei; he founded the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Crucis in 1948 and the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Mariae in 1953, institutions later merged into the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

7. Died — 1975

   Escrivá died of cardiac arrest on 26 June 1975 in Rome, aged 73, on entering his work room which held a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe; at the time of his death Opus Dei had approximately 60,000 members in 80 countries.

8. Other — 2002

   Pope John Paul II canonized Escrivá on 6 October 2002 in Rome, in a ceremony attended by 42 cardinals and 470 bishops; the canonization rested on the Vatican's acceptance of the reported miraculous cure in 1992 of Dr. Manuel Nevado Rey from cancerous chronic radiodermatitis.

Relationships

Documented claims

• In 1982, Pope John Paul II established Opus Dei as a personal prelature — currently the only such prelature in the Catholic Church — subject solely to its own prelate and the Pope, fulfilling a goal Escrivá had sought during his lifetime. (certain)
• In 1968, Escrivá petitioned the Spanish Ministry of Justice to rehabilitate the title of Marquess of Peralta in his favor; he never publicly used the title, ceding it to his brother Santiago in 1972. (certain)
• Escrivá oversaw construction of a major Marian shrine at Torreciudad, Aragon, inaugurated on 7 July 1975 — eleven days after his death — on the site where Aragonese locals had long venerated an 11th-century statue of the Virgin Mary. (likely)
• Two of the nine judges of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints requested suspension of Escrivá's beatification process; one confidential dissenting vote, reproduced in the journal Il Regno in May 1992, questioned the haste of proceedings and the near-absence of critical testimony. (likely)
• The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, providing diocesan priests a path of association with Opus Dei, was founded on 14 February 1943 and remains canonically affiliated with the prelature. (certain)