Opus Dei

The historian José Luis González Gullón recounts some previously unpublished details of 26 June 1975, the day Saint Josemaría passed away.

The song “Aprite le finestre” was the piece with which singer Franca Raimondi won the popular Sanremo Music Festival in 1956, Italy’s most important musical competition. St. Josemaría liked it and saw it as a simple and radiant expression of Christian hope in eternal life. He told those around him that he would like it to be sung at the moment of his death.

April 29 is the feast day of Saint Catherine of Siena. The story of how Saint Josemaria decided to name her an intercessor of Opus Dei. Adapted from an article published in "Studia et Documenta," vol. 8 (2014).

St. Josemaría was very devoted to our Lady of Montserrat, and it was on her feast, 27 April, in the year 1954, that he was cured of diabetes, after a dramatic attack in which he almost died.

In May of 1970, St. Josemaría announced his desire to cross the Atlantic to prostrate himself at the feet of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feast we celebrate on 12 December.

10 December is the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, established by Pope Francis. Saint Josemaría considered himself especially indebted to Our Lady of Loreto for a very serious need that he placed under Our Lady's mantle on 15 August 1951.

Saint Josemaría is the first pilgrim to Fatima raised to the altars. The story of Fatima as it impacted his life, and also the life of Saint John Paul II.

Our Lady of the Pillar is one of the oldest Marian invocations. We celebrate her feast day on 12 October.

The founder of Opus Dei was ordained a priest in the chapel of his diocesan seminary. Two days later, he celebrated his first Mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, at the feet of the beloved Madonna he had prayed to so often.

In addition to being one of the most-loved Marian shrines worldwide, Lourdes is also linked to an important page in the history of Opus Dei: the escape from one part of Spain to another that St. Josemaría made through the Pyrenees in 1937 with some of the first members of the Work and other people during the Spanish Civil War.