They call him God’s architect, though he is renowned for leaving his most important creation less than half finished.
Now Antonio Gaudi may be on his way to join the saints still being placed on the facade of the Sagrada Familia, the cathedral in Barcelona he began work on in 1883 and which is not due to be finished until 2025.
The Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes is considering a petition to beatify the devout architect, who died under a tram 77 years ago.
A pile of documents gathered by the Archbishop of Barcelona, offered as proof of Gaudi’s ability to intercede with God on behalf of those who pray to him, is in the hands of the Vatican for it to pass judgment on his putative saintliness.
Among them are claims that the twisting, soaring towers and eccentric, colourful, ceramic adornments that liven the Sagrada Familia’s exterior have the power to convert unbelievers. His backers are confident that, sooner or later, Gaudi will become the blessed Gaudi, and be placed on the first of what are several rungs of the ladder to sainthood.
”There are no serious obstacles,” declared Jose Manuel Almuzara, an architect who is president of the Gaudi Beatification Society. He leads a movement of 80 000 people worldwide who pray to Gaudi and beseech him to perform miracles.
Among those in Rome this week to help present the evidence was Etsuro Sotoo, a Japanese sculptor who worked for several years on the Sagrada Familia, and says Gaudi’s mysticism led him to the Catholic church.
Barcelona’s Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles believes that only divine inspiration could have produced such a monument to God. ”Can anyone acquainted with [Gaudi’s] work believe that all which one contemplates could possibly have been produced only by cold thought?” he has asked.
Supporters tell how the wafer-thin, vegetarian Gaudi spent his final months living in the dusty workshops surrounding the Sagrada Familia, and went unrecognised when the No 30 tram on Gran Via knocked him over. His friends eventually found him, close to death, in a pauper hospital, from where he refused to budge. ”My place is here,” the pious architect declared. – Guardian Unlimited Â