HomeDocumentationHistorical NotesHow did Father Josemaria exercise his priesthood during the Spanish Civil War?
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Historical Notes

How did Father Josemaria exercise his priesthood during the Spanish Civil War?

Tags: Spanish Civil War, History, Priesthood
D. Josemaría Escrivá, 1937, Madrid
D. Josemaría Escrivá, 1937, Madrid
Throughout the three years the Spanish Civil War lasted, Father Josemaria exercised his priestly ministry in different ways according to the different circumstances in which he found himself.
From the outbreak of the war on July 18, 1936, until he found refuge in the Honduran Legation on March 14, 1937, he was compelled to dress as a layman to avoid being murdered on sight. Even in the relative safety of the Honduran Legation, he was still unable to dress as a priest. Like many priests, he had to celebrate Mass in secret.

Despite this, whenever circumstances required it he didn’t hesitate to tell people that he was a priest, so that he could give spiritual help to anyone who asked for it. He did so in full knowledge that he was risking his life, since he could be betrayed or denounced.

On August 30, 1936, Father Josemaria was in hiding with Juan Jimenez Vargas in the house of some friends of his in Sagasta Street, Madrid. One of them, Jose Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, did not know who Father Josemaria was. Years later, he recalled what happened when some militiamen came into the building and started searching it. “They started at the basement and worked their way up, going through each apartment in turn. Before they got to ours, we went up an inside stairway to an attic which was full of coal-dust and junk, like all attics. The roof was so low we couldn’t stand upright, and it was unbearably hot. Then we heard them coming into the next attic to search it. At that point, Father Josemaria said to me in a low voice, “I am a priest. This looks bad. If you want, make an act of contrition and I’ll give you absolution.” But quite inexplicably, after searching the whole house, they didn’t come into the attic we were in. It took a lot of courage for him to tell me that he was a priest, because I could have betrayed him. If the militia had come in, I could have tried to save my life by informing on him” (cf. A. Vazquez de Prada, The Founder of Opus Dei, vol. 2, chapter 1, pp. 26-7).

When Father Josemaria finally reached the Honduran Legation, he was able to preach and celebrate Mass for some of the other refugees. From the Legation he wrote letters to friends and acquaintances, using coded language to evade the censors. For example, his name for Jesus Christ was “Don Manuel” and his name for himself was “Grandfather”.

When he left the Honduran Legation in September 1937 he carried documents which afforded him relative freedom of movement in Madrid, though it was still very risky. He preached a spiritual retreat to a group of young men, clandestinely and taking all sorts of precautions. He attended some groups of women religious who had taken refuge in private houses, and administered the sacraments of reconciliation or anointing of the sick, pretending to be a doctor. That was how, for instance, he managed to administer the anointing of the sick to Alvaro del Portillo’s father before he died.

After his trek across the Pyrenees into the other zone of Spain the need for clandestinity was at an end. Father Josemaria stayed briefly in Pamplona, and then in Burgos for a year and three months, from January 1938 through March 1939, and from there he carried out intense pastoral work, travelling all over that zone of Spain to visit the people he knew, many of whom had been scattered to the various battlefronts.