Saint Josemaría Escrivá in Rome

  7:11
In 1946, shortly after the end of the Second World War, two young priests arrived in Rome. One was Polish: Karol Wojtyła, the future Saint John Paul II. The other was Spanish: Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, canonised in 2002 by John Paul II himself, who described him as “the saint of ordinary life”. Both would play an important role in the life of the twentieth-century Church and in the great renewal promoted by the Second Vatican Council. One of the central messages of the Council — the universal call to holiness — was precisely what Saint Josemaría had been preaching since 1928: all Christians are called to seek God in everyday life, in their work, in their family and in their ordinary occupations. In this episode, we visit the places in Rome connected with Saint Josemaría: his arrival in Rome in June 1946, his prayer for Pius XII and for the Church, Villa Tevere, the prelatic church of Our Lady of Peace, his relationship with Blessed Álvaro del Portillo and Bishop Javier Echevarría, the beginnings of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, the ELIS Centre and the Campus Bio-Medico University.