Romana

A Portrait of Guadalupe in the Royal Oratory of the Knight of Grace, Madrid, Spain (May 18, 2019)

Since October 6, 2018, the remains of Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri have reposed in a wooden chest engraved with her name, in the Royal Oratory of the Knight of Grace in Madrid.

The chest with Guadalupe’s remains is normally kept at a side altar, but during the days of the beatification it was placed in front of the main altar, to make it easier for all the pilgrims who have come to Madrid to pray before it, ask for favors and give thanks for her holy life.

Ignacio Valdés, a painter from the Sacred Art School in Florence, produced the portrait, which was exhibited on May 18 in the sacristy of this oratory. Guadalupe is shown standing next to an open window with light streaming in; some elements of her biography are depicted in the painting, including here love for her studies and chemisty, and her time spent in Mexico.

At the Santa Engracia Institute, Madrid (May 9, 2019)

The twelve years that Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri taught at the Santa Engracia School of Industrial Education (1964-1975) left a deep mark on many students.

Therefore on Thursday, May 9, a round table presided over by the director, Almudena Marcos Ortiz, was held, in which former students of Guadalupe took part, as well as Mercedes Montero Díaz, a historian at the School of Communication in the University of Navarra and the author of a biography about Guadalupe entitled En Vanguardi.

Exhibition “Guadalupe. Live the Experience,” a sensory journey to holiness

Can you touch holiness? The exhibition inaugurated at the Tajamar School in Madrid tries to answer this question. With a contemporary visual language captured on wooden cubes, various sound and audiovisual resources are used to enable visitors to enter into the historical era and personality of Blessed Guadalupe, as well as to reveal some of the secrets of her life.

The exhibition’s curator, Ana Sánchez de la Nieta, explained: “Most saints do not appear in history books; they have to be discovered, as Pope Francis says in his exhortation Gaudete et exsultate. Guadalupe belonged to this ‘middle class' of holiness the Pope alludes to, and this exhibition took up the challenge of making her life known through a contemporary visual language addresed to people from all over the world, who would gather these days in Madrid for her beatification.”

The exhibition seeks to enable each visitor to take away more than just facts. “Guadlupe had a rich and multifaceted personality. We wanted to tell everything about her life and at the same time let people introduce themselves into the world of Guadalupe by establishing a dialogue with her,” the person responsible for the design, Amaya Sánchez Ostiz, said.

The exhibition, a “time tunnel” with personal objects from Guadalupe, offered visitors reproductions of her letters to the founder of Opus Dei, her original diaries with notes on her inner life, and even a refractory brick made from rice husk ashes used for reasearch for her doctoral thesis.

The head of the agency that set up the show, Penelope Benito, from Light House, confided that this endeavor helped her to connect in a special way with Guadalupe. “There has always been a lot of chemistry between us. Some projects are quite special, and without a doubt this has been the most special one I’ve been involved in so far,” she said.

The director of the Tajamar School, Ignacio San Román, said that hosting the exhibition allowed many people tied to the school’s educational community to forge a more personal connection with the new Blessed from Madrid.

The opening was also attended by the Secretary General of the Community of Madrid, Manuel Quintanar, who congratulated the organizers on behalf of the President of the Madrid Government and highlighted the “human, professional and Christian excellence” of Guadalupe. Quintanar also expressed pleasure that Madrid was chosen as the site for the beatification, and stressed that the new Blessed provided an example of joyful sanctity: “things that are worthwhile are always done with joy.”