The feast of Blessed Alvaro will be celebrated on 12 May, the anniversary of his First Holy Communion
Michael Kirke
There was joy in the air on Saturday in a large open space on the outskirts of Madrid when an estimated 200,000 people from more than 80 countries listened to and responded to a sublime rendering of The Lord Is My Shepherd at the Mass for the beatification of Bishop Alvaro del Portillo.
As a spectacle, this was a truly astounding sight, as the congregation stretched as far back as the eye could see along the improvised esplanade, and seemed to merge into the four giant towers which now dominate Madrid’s skyline. But it was not just a spectacle: this event had deep resonances which reminded this giant congregation of all that is central to their Christian faith.
While the ceremony celebrated the life of an ordinary man, a priest, who sought and attained sanctity in the course of his life in this world, it also served as a reminder of one very particular and painful reality in our world today. As we read of the horrific persecution and martyrdom of thousands of Christians in the Middle East, we are reminded that this is no new story and that Christians have been suffering and dying for their faith in every decade of the Christian era.
Alvaro del Portillo was a man who lived his faith and lived for his faith up to the time of his peaceful death in 1994. He was also a man who lived through the years of persecution of Catholics during the Spanish Civil War and who at one point was threatened with summary execution when a gun was put to his head, simply because he was a Catholic.
He worked as an engineer before becoming a priest and was the righthand man of St Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. Having worked with him from the mid-1930s until Josemaría’s death in 1975, Fr Alvaro, later a bishop, became the new head of what was to become the Prelature of Opus Dei by decree of St John Paul II in 1982.
On the morning of August 13, 1936, soldiers entered the apartment block in which the del Portillo family lived. They raided the apartment above, looking for Cristino Bermudez, the son of an officer in the Nationalist army.
Bermudez was not at home but, when his wife tried to escape and hide in the del Portillo apartment, it was also raided and occupied until Bermudez arrived home.
Bermudez was arrested, taken away and shot.
Alvaro’s father, Ramón, was also arrested and taken to prison, but escaped execution.
As the persecution in Madrid intensified, and when simply to be known as a practising Catholic amounted to a death sentence, Alvaro left the family home and went into hiding, eventually taking refuge in the Finnish embassy.
This, however, proved to be no protection and, when the military raided the embassy, Alvaro and other refugees were arrested and imprisoned.
Speaking of this experience in later life, he said: “I had never been involved in any political activity and I was not a priest, or a monk, or even a seminarian. I was an engineering student. I got thrown in jail just because I came from a Catholic family.
“By then I was already wearing glasses, and one of the guards came up to me – his name was Petrof – and he put a pistol to my temple and said, ‘You’re wearing glasses – you must be a priest’. He could have killed me at any moment… It was terrifying”.
In later years, Fr Alvaro, apart from his administrative and pastoral work in Opus Dei, was asked by the Holy See to work as a consultor to several Congregations of the Roman Curia and was active on a daily basis in the work and deliberations of the Second Vatican Council.
Expansion
Then, in 1975, he was elected to succeed Josemaría Escrivá as head of Opus Dei and in the years that followed saw the expansion of the movement into several countries of Eastern Europe and also the Far East. He visited Ireland on several occasions.
In March 1994, he celebrated his 80th birthday. Friends had given him the present of a few days in the Holy Land, and – in what is seen by many as an extraordinary sign of providence – he celebrated his last Mass in the Last Supper Room, the cenacle, in Jerusalem on March 22, 1994.
He died in the early hours of March 23, back in Rome to which he had returned the evening before.
Later that day, in an extraordinary step for a Pope, John Paul II went to pray beside his mortal remains.
The booklet produced for the occasion of the beatification recounts his words when Fr Javier Echevarría, who would be Bishop Alvaro’s elected successor, thanked the Pope for the honour of his visit. He said: “Si doveva, si doveva”, meaning, “I had to do it, I had to do it”, recognising his contribution to the life of the Church.
The feast of Blessed Alvaro will be celebrated on 12 May, the anniversary of his First Holy Communion.