Vatican puts ‘God’s architect’ Antoni Gaudí on path to sainthood

He’s long been nicknamed “God’s architect” by those who point to his piety and the religious imagery woven through his soaring spires, colourful ceramics and undulating lines.

Now it seems the Vatican may be ready to make it official. It said on Monday that Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect behind Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica, had been put on the path to sainthood.

The Vatican said in a statement that Pope Francis had recognised Gaudí’s “heroic virtues” during the 88-year-old’s first official appointment after weeks of illness with life-threatening pneumonia.

Gaudí devotees have called for him to be named a saint for more than three decades Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images

Nearly a century after Gaudí’s death, the declaration is one of the initial steps in the long and complex process towards sainthood. The architect behind several of Barcelona’s biggest tourist attractions will have to be beatified before he can pass to the last step of canonisation.

Gaudí devotees have called for him to be named a saint for more than three decades, pointing to how the fantasy spires and intricate stonework of the Sagrada Família had convinced some to convert to Catholicism.

“There are no serious obstacles,” the architect and then-president of the Gaudí Beatification Society, José Manuel Almuzara said in 2003. He described the society as a movement of 80,000 people worldwide who prayed to Gaudí, beseeching him to perform miracles.

Workers complete the Sagrada Família’s Virgin Mary’s spire in 2021. Photograph: Matthias Oesterle/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

The church began considering the request in the early 2000s.

Construction of the Sagrada Família began in 1882. More than 140 years later, it remains the largest unfinished Roman Catholic church in the world, despite Gaudí devoting the last 12 years of his life to the project.

Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the building in 2010, when he praised “the genius of Antoni Gaudí in transforming this church into a praise to God made of stone”.

Years later it was announced that the basilica would be completed in 2026, a date that coincided with the centenary of Gaudís death. The completion date, however, was postponed indefinitely after the pandemic brought construction to a halt and reduced the tourist revenues available to fund the work.