The Vatican opens the way to the beatification of Gaudí

First act since leaving the hospital, Pope Francis has authorized the publication of a decree recognizing the heroic virtues of the one we call “The architect of God” : Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), a first step towards his beatification. “Gaudí has ​​left a testimony for all of us (…) He tells us that despite the difficulties of life, work, pain, suffering, we are intended to be saints” said the Archbishop of Barcelona, ​​Juan Josep Omella.

Gaudí’s beatification process was initiated in 2000 by the Gaudí Pro Beatification Association, with the support of the Catalan bishops. The procedure was then activated in Rome in 2003. Recognition of its heroic virtues marks a significant advance, but the beatification remains conditioned on the recognition of a miracle. A second miracle is then required for its possible canonization.

Born in 1852 in Reus, Antoni Gaudí settled in 1868 in Barcelona. During his last years of study, between 1873 and 1879, he wrote the manuscript of “Reus”a kind of newspaper where he brings together his impressions on architecture, very animated by faith. While graduating, the director of the school of architecture would have declared about him that he did not know if this diploma had been given to a madman or a genius, “The future will tell us”.

In 1883, Antoni Gaudí was entrusted with the design and construction of the Sagrada Família, in the Barcelona district of the Eixample. Previously led by the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano (1828-1901), he left Gaudí a neo-Gothic project.

Antoni Gaudí fully transformed the design, conceived a basilica with five naves, three ornate facades and eighteen towers symbolizing the apostles, the evangelists, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, in a very new art style. “Praise of God made of stone,” said Pope Benoît XVI.

The site gradually distinguished him from social life. He adopted a harsher existence, marked by mysticism. In 1926, he died crushed by a tram when he went to the Sagrada Família site. The building remained unfinished. When asked when the cathedral was over, Gaudí replied that his ” customer “ (God) was not in a hurry.

Finishing the construction of the central tower for the centenary of his death is a miracle.