God's architect: The story of the Vatican and the visionary

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Deep in the heart of the Vatican, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins has been mulling a delicate issue for some time; should he give the nod to Pope Benedict XVI to make Antoni Gaudí a saint?

The Portuguese prelate heads the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints and decides who should be recommended for membership of the most exclusive club, sainthood. The Pontiff gets the final say.

But recommending a person for this honour is not, as one would imagine, a decision any self-respecting cardinal can take lightly. Hence he has been considering Gaudí's candidature for the past four years since receiving a petition to beatify the devout architect, who died under a tram 81 years ago.

A pile of documents gathered by the then Archbishop of Barcelona, Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles, was sent to the Vatican as proof of Gaudí's ability to intercede with God on behalf of those who pray to him. "God's architect", as the monk-like Gaudí is famously known, left this world with his life's work, the Sagrada Familia cathedral, less than half completed. But campaigners for the beatification of Gaudí are quietly confident that the Vatican has been convinced of their argument and their hero will soon be on the fast track to receive the Lord's greatest honour.

They rest their case on the argument that Gaudí's Sagrada Familia was not simply the work of a visionary architect. The Association for the Beatification of Gaudí, which has been gathering up to 80,000 supporters from around the world for the past 25 years, believes it also inspires unbelievers. Archbishop Carles has said: "Can anyone acquainted with [Gaudí's] work believe that all which one contemplates could possibly have been produced only by cold thought?"

Campaigners also believe Gaudí's legendary piety is also reason enough to lift him up among St Peter and St Paul. Gaudi was obsessively pious, especially in his old age. He used to shuffle around the streets of his native Barcelona nibbling on crusts of bread and seeking alms for the building of the Sagrada Familia. He hated liberalism and was devoted to everything most penitential and reactionary in Spanish Catholicism.

When he was hit by a tram in Barcelona's Gran Via in 1926, he was so dishevelled taxi drivers refused to take him to hospital, believing he was a tramp. He died days later in a paupers' hospital, after his friends had at first failed to recognise him.

Jose Manuel Almuzara, an architect and president of the Association for the Beatification of Gaudí, said: "We do not see any serious obstacles to him becom-ing canonised. His greatest creation has made faith accessible to the average person and inspired thousands who were not Catholics before they visited. We do not know how long this may take but we are confident.

"As, Gaudí used to say when asked how long the Sagrada Familia would take, 'My client is not in a hurry'."

Mr Almuzara is among thousands who pray to Gaudí, whose life is seen by supporters as exemplary. They believe an image of the architect should be placed among the other saints on the façade of the Sagrada Familia, which was begun in 1883 and is not due to be finished until 2020.

If Gaudí were to become another of the saints sitting in Heaven before long, it would create something of a precedent. No architects have been needed in the celestial city as God is presumed to have made it all himself.

The last "creative" to be made a saint was Luke, who was a painter. But he was one of the Apostles. If the Vatican were to depart with tradition and canonise Gaudí, it might raise eyebrows among those campaigning for the same honour for the likes of Pope John Paul II or even other figures like Mother Teresa.

For Cardinal Saraiva Martins, however, the decision to create a St Antoni Gaudí may not be so easy for other reasons. There is one slight problem which may prompt some awkward questions from God. The normal practice in the Roman Catholic Church is that for a person to be canonised they need to have demonstrated they inspired miracles. Apparitions may also help their cause, but miracles are what can really seal the deal.

Campaigners make no secret of the fact they cannot pretend any workmen have fallen from the walls of the Sagrada Familia and been miraculously saved.

The best they have managed so far is a student who believed Gaudí had helped her pass her exams and a woman who claimed that after praying to Spain's most famous architect, she had been cured of a kidney stone. Gaudi is said, however, to have inspired apparitions. Stephanie Pfeil, a German artist living in Barcelona, does claim to have woken one morning to see a young version of Gaudi in her flat. "He wanted to tell me something very important about the way the Sagrada Familia worked. But I could not hear him as I had earplugs in," she says. "When I took them out, he disappeared. I am convinced it was him."

Meanwhile, another more earthly problem may bedevil those who are behind Gaudí's bid for sainthood. The Sagrada Familia, on which campaigners have based their campaign for his beatification, faces a new threat from plans for a railway tunnel just a few feet from its foundations. Architects, geologists and the authorities that run the Sagrada Familia oppose the route of the high-speed AVE train from Madrid, which is due to start operating later this year.

The cathedral's crypt and Nativity façade are Unesco World Heritage Sites and campaigners want to mobilise international pressure to force the authorities behind the plan to change the route of the AVE train.

Architect Jordi Bonet, whose father Luis Bonet worked with Gaudí when the building work started, said: "This will amount to cultural vandalism. The Sagrada Familia is something which is supposed to last centuries for people around the world to enjoy and this train is only designed for about 40 years. But from the studies we have made and seen, the train will do irreparable damage to the structure of the building."

The expert Spanish geologist Oriol Riba said: "They urgently need to change the route away from the Sagrada Familia. The towers are already in danger because of the pressure which they have to support from the weight of the building. This tunnel will further endanger them, not only by the building work but every time there is a train running underneath." Father Antoni Llompart, the parish priest of the Sagrada Familia, said: "If Gaudí were alive today he would say it is not worth endangering such a building, which is known all over the world."

Xavier Trias, of the opposition Convergencia i Union regional party, argued the train should change course and run north of the city or along the coast. But the Spanish government and Barcelona's city council support the current plans to run the train through the city centre within a few feet of the eccentrically-designed cathedral. Xavier Casas, Barcelona's deputy mayor, has said that all the alternative routes were "unviable".

The rail plans were drawn up in the Eighties to unite Madrid with Barcelona. But years of political squabbling between the former conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar and the regional government in Barcelona made up of Socialists and Catalan nationalists delayed the ambitious scheme.

This new threat to the Sagrada Familia comes just as builders were finally predicting they may finish the seemingly never-ending works. After 127 years, the cathedral could be finished in 20 years - though some realists think 40 is closer to the mark.

In 1883, Gaudí took over the Sagrada Familia project after a dispute between the church's original architect and its founder. Then aged 31, he was already considered a brilliant artist who drew his inspiration from nature and, soon after, from God.

"He found everything in nature," said his biographer Joan Bassegoda. "He would look at an insect or a duck and find interesting forms that he would transfer into architecture. After Gaudí, there were no Gaudí schools. Because Gaudí always said, 'Don't copy me, copy nature'."

With funding restrictions, Gaudí was forced to beg donations from Barcelona's richest families when he ran out of money for the building work. He died in 1926 without detailing the final plans so that the team in charge of realising his dream now have to partly guess how the building should look.

The building later survived attacks by anarchists who burnt the original plans in the Spanish Civil War. The building will eventually have 18 spires, many decorated with colourful ceramic baubles, crosses or words praising God. The tallest spire will reach 170 metres (520ft).

As campaigners wait for the Vatican's decision, one cannot help wondering what Gaudí himself would have made of being canonised? Father Luis Bonet, rector of the Sagrada Familia, dismisses any thought that if Gaudí were alive today he would be a little embarrassed.

"It would seem to Gaudí like getting another prize, like receiving an Oscar," he says.

Life and works

Antoni Gaudí was born on 25 June 1852 in Catalonia into a poorly paid family of metal workers. Too weak to play with friends because of chronic rheumatism, the young Gaudí spent much of his childhood observing nature, an influence that featured heavily in his work. As an architecture student at the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona from 1873 to 1877, his grades were mediocre. His racy architectural designs, which married gothic and traditional Spanish architectural modes with influences drawn from nature, were a radical departure from the architecture of the time. At his graduation in 1878, his patron, Elies Rogent, declared: "I have either found a lunatic or a genius." Devoutly Catholic, a strict Easter fast nearly cost Gaudí his life. His religious devotion grew particularly intense at a tragic period in his life when his brother, mother and sister all died in the space of a year. The stunning cathedral Gaudí designed to dominate Barcelona's cityscape, the Sagrada Familia, is widely regarded as his finest work, even though it was unfinished at the time of his death. On 9 June 1926, Gaudí was run over by a tram. He died three days later, taking the final design of the Sagrada Familia to his grave. Spanish architects have since been trying to discover what exactly he had planned.