The Push for Gaudi Sainthood
Momentum is building to canonize the creator of Sagrada Familia. But not everyone is convinced he’s worthy.
Last year, shortly before his death, Pope Francis declared that famed Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudí had displayed “heroic virtues,” a key step in efforts to elevate the city’s best-known modernist to sainthood.
For decades the Diocese of Barcelona and an advocacy group of civic leaders, the Association for the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí, have been making the case for the creator of Sagrada Familia, who is often called “God’s architect.” The Vatican began a formal review in 2003, after advocates produced a 2,000-page positio, with studies and documents supporting the application.
Pope Francis was a fan; he called Gaudi “a great mystic.” By classifying Gaudi as “venerable,” his saint application cleared a major hurdle.
Gaudi supporters point to Sagrada Familia, the “last cathedral,” as a saint-worthy achievement. “Can anyone acquainted with [Gaudí’s] work believe that all which one contemplates could possibly have been produced only by cold thought?” Barcelona’s then-Cardinal Ricardo María Carles Gordó said in 2003.
But many issues remain before Gaudi can be declared a saint, including the thorny question of miracles. There is speculation that supporters might point to a miracle attributed to Gaudi after his death. Or it’s possible the Pope could simply waive the miracle requirement, according to published.
There are concerns about the precedent of anointing an artist as a saint. Many artists could claim God’s involvement in their transcendent work, to one degree or another. And Gaudi was no Mother Teresa helping the poor; most of his work was at the behest of wealthy patrons, eager to spend money on an original Gaudi.
Either way, the canonization discussion will certainly alter Gaudi’s public image. Many of his fans revere Gaudi as a pioneer in naturalism and connecting design to the organic world, not a religious zealot. His role as “God’s servant” doesn’t fit the image of the “King of Modernism.”
“In certain important respects, Gaudí was not a modernista architect at all; his religious obsessions, for instance, separate him from the generally secular character of modernisme,” wrote former New York Times art critic Robert Hughes in his opus, Barcelona.
For Common Edge, I dove deeper into the Gaudi sainthood campaign and it’s effect on Gaudi’s reputation as an architect.
Read the article here.
