Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri Fernández de Heredia

Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri Fernández de Heredia (12 December 1916 – 16 July 1975) was a Spanish Roman Catholic professor and a member of the Opus Dei personal prelature.

Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri Fernández de Heredia was born in Madrid on 12 December 1916 as the fourth of four children (and the only daughter) to Manuel Ortiz de Landázuri, a military officer, and Eulogia Fernández-Heredia.

Her three elder siblings were Manuel, Eduardo, and Francisco, who died in childhood.

The Ortiz de Landázuri moved to Tétouan in Morocco in 1927 after her father was sent there for further work.

Crisis struck the nation with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the mid-1930s.

When her father was taken prisoner and condemned to execution, Ortiz de Landázuri accompanied her brother, Eduardo, and their mother to bid a final farewell, just hours before his death.

In 1932, they returned to Spain and lived in Madrid where her father was named Lieutenant Colonel), and Guadalupe finished high school at the Instituto Miguel de Cervantes. In June 1933, she enrolled in the Universidad Central de Madrid in chemical science and was just one of five women in a class of 70 students. Ortiz de Landázuri eventually pursued a doctorate since she wanted to teach chemistry at the university level.

It was after this, in 1937, that she relocated with Eduardo and their mother to Valladolid where her elder brother Manuel resided; she remained there until the civil war ended, just a few months before the outbreak of World War II.

She returned to Madrid in 1939 where she began her career as a teacher.

Her brother Eduardo (who became a doctor and college professor) and his wife (the two married in 1941) have both been named as Servants of God.

Her father's career in the armed forces meant the Ortiz de Landázuris moved from place to place each time he was sent on a new assignment.

She was one of the first women to join Opus Dei, after meeting the founder Josemaría Escrivá in 1944.

She helped start Opus Dei in Mexico and also collaborated directly with Escrivá in Rome.

One day at Mass in 1944, she felt something that she interpreted as being a sign from God.

Ortiz de Landázuri returned home to consult with a friend and expressed a desire to speak with a priest.

That friend gave her the phone number of a well-known priest Josemaría Escrivá and Ortiz de Landázuri met Escrivá for the first time on 25 January 1944.

Shortly following this, Ortiz de Landázuri went on a spiritual retreat and on 19 March she sent a letter to Escrivá asking to be admitted to Opus Dei.

On 5 March 1951 - at Escrivá's invitation - she moved to Mexico to spread the message of Opus Dei.

While there, Ortiz de Landázuri enrolled in a doctoral program in chemical sciences so she could continue what she had already started in Spain.

In its capital she set up a student residence for university women, creating an environment conducive to serious study, healthy diversion, and friendship.

She also helped establish the Montefalco School and other social projects aimed at improving opportunities for the local people.

For example, together with a doctor friend, she created a mobile medical clinic that allowed them to go from house to house in poorer neighborhoods, providing both free medicine and medical tests.

Ortiz de Landázuri relocated to Rome in 1956 to work with Escrivá in the governance of Opus Dei.

Not long after her arrival, she noted pain in her chest which turned out to be a serious heart condition, and she returned to Madrid for an operation.

After partially recovering, she continued with her academic work, now in Spain.

During this time, she began a research project on insulating refracting materials from rice husks; she won the prize Juan de la Cierva for this project and finally completed and defended her doctoral thesis on 8 July 1965.

She also worked at the Ramiro de Maeztu Institute and then at the Women's School for Industrial Sciences where she took on a leadership position that she held for the next decade.

From 1968, she also took part in the planning and establishment of the Center of Studies and Research of Domestic Sciences.

A serious heart condition eventually claimed her life in 1975.

In 1975, the doctors said it would be best for them to operate again, despite there being some risks.

Ortiz de Landázuri left her Madrid home to check into the Clínica Universidad de Navarra where she was operated on 1 July.

Though the surgery was successful, she developed a sudden failure in respiration which caused her death on 16 July at 6:30 am; her mother died in the same clinic the next week on 23 July.

After several requests from people who knew her during her life, her cause of canonization opened on 3 November 2001.

In 2001 the Opus Dei prelate Javier Echevarría Rodríguez started the steps needed to launch the beatification process.

The forum for the diocesan process for the cause was transferred on 30 March 2001 from the Pamplona-Tudela diocese to the Madrid archdiocese at which point the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on 3 November issued the "nihil obstat" (no objections) edit to begin the cause and to title her as a Servant of God.

Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela opened the diocesan process on 18 November and later closed it on 18 March 2005.

In mid-2017, Pope Francis declared that she had lived a life of heroic virtue and named her Venerable.

The same Pope confirmed a miracle attributed to her intercession (the healing of a cancer patient) in June 2018.

Ortiz de Landázuri's remains were buried in Pamplona where she had died but were later transferred to Madrid on 5 October 2018.

Her beatification was celebrated on 18 May 2019 in Madrid.