CNN
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Antoni Gaudí, the celebrated Catalan long nicknamed “God’s architect” for designing Barcelona’s Sagrada Família, has been put on the path to sainthood by the Vatican.
In a statement released on Monday, the Vatican said Pope Francis recognized Gaudí’s “heroic virtues,” which is a step on the path to sainthood.
Becoming a saint is a complex process that can take hundreds of years, however, since a candidate normally needs two miracles to be attributed to their intercession.
Finding those miracles will be the next step if Gaudí is to beatified and then canonized. Commissions of doctors and theologians then examine the miracles before the pope makes the ultimate decision to canonize someone.
Gaudí is a rare case. Few artists become saints and no architect, in the modern understanding of the profession, has ever been canonized.
Gaudí’s legacy is intrinsically linked with Catholicism as he dedicated much of his career to the Sagrada Família – a church of such awesome splendor that it remains unfinished more than 140 years after construction began.
He envisioned the church to be “a Bible in stone” and designed a monumental structure with 18 huge, spindle-shaped towers, each symbolizing a different biblical figure – the 12 apostles, the four evangelists, the Virgin Mary and Jesus.
When it is finally completed in 2026, the tower of Jesus Christ will stand at 172.5 meters (566 feet) tall and will be finished with a 17-meter-tall (56-foot) four-armed cross, making it the world’s tallest church.
Inside, the nave is bathed in multicolored light that streams in from every direction through ornately decorated stained-glass windows.
Gaudí never saw the church anywhere near completion. He died in 1926, when only an estimated 10%-15% of the project had been built, including one transept, a crypt and some of the apse wall.
Although Gaudí dedicated the remaining few years of his life and career exclusively to the Sagrada Família, other buildings bearing his distinctive style are dotted all over Barcelona, lending the city much of its character.
For decades, there has been a movement calling for Gaudí’s beatification, known as the Association for the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí. The Archbishop of Barcelona took up that cause in 2023 and submitted the positio, or key argument, for Gaudí’s beatification to the Vatican.
CNN’s Jack Guy and Amarachi Orie contributed reporting.