Mitzi a law student. She works at a law firm and lives with her siblings. Her day-to-day life is like that of any young woman in her twenties: lectures, sport, work, friends. A normal life. And that very ordinariness is what draws her to Isidoro.
Between studying and working, Mitzi does not always find time to read, so an audiobook is often the perfect companion. That is how she came across Isidoro 100%, a podcast that tells the story of this Argentinian on his path to holiness.
An engineer, like my dad
“I really connect with Pope Francis’s idea of the saints next door: people who lived ordinary lives and found God in the everyday,” Mitzi tells us. And the fact that Isidoro is Argentinian and that her brother and her father are engineers just like him makes the distance feel even smaller.
“I listened to his audiobook and I love that he’s from Argentina. What I liked most is that he knew how to work behind the scenes, without doing anything extraordinary. Just the daily, behind-the-scenes work of keeping the Work going. His life was very ordinary.”
Isidoro, please find my brother a job
Some time ago, Mitzi’s brother lost his job overnight. She suggested asking Isidoro for help, and so they began praying a prayer card for his intercession every day. Within a month, her brother had found work at a large company, in a better position than the one he had before.
“Isidoro made sure it was sorted so quickly... Now we ask him for everything. He’s very much a part of our lives. It’s really lovely,” she says, and you can tell she means it.
A saint in ordinary life
Isidoro was born in Buenos Aires in 1902. He spent his youth in Spain, where he studied engineering, and later worked on the railways in Málaga. From the outside, there was nothing extraordinary about his life.
Yet those who knew him agree that he was the best companion you could have. During the Spanish Civil War, he used his Argentinian passport to help people who were in hiding or imprisoned, putting his own life at risk for his friends. He also carried the Blessed Sacrament from place to place to make it possible for people to receive Communion.
He died in 1943, at the age of 40, with a reputation for holiness. In 2016, Pope Francis declared him Venerable, recognising that he had lived the virtues in a heroic manner.
Don’t know Isidoro?
“To anyone who doesn’t know Isidoro yet, I’d say: don’t be afraid to ask him for a great deal. He doesn’t disappoint.”