{"id":9454,"date":"2026-06-08T10:00:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/?p=9454"},"modified":"2026-06-12T15:19:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:19:56","slug":"sainthood-puts-gaudi-in-too-small-a-box-says-gods-architect-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/2026\/06\/08\/sainthood-puts-gaudi-in-too-small-a-box-says-gods-architect-author\/","title":{"rendered":"Sainthood puts Gaud\u00ed “in too small a box” says God’s Architect author"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Portrait<\/div>\n

Canonising Antoni Gaud\u00ed<\/a> as a saint would disregard his internal struggles in pursuit of divine perfection, argues author Peter Stanford in this interview<\/a> as part of our Gaud\u00ed Centenary<\/a> series.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week, to mark the centenary of Gaud\u00ed’s death, Pope Leo XIV will visit Barcelona to inaugurate the central tower of the architect’s masterpiece \u2013 the Sagrada Fam\u00edlia. It is also suspected that the Pope will announce the beatification of Gaud\u00ed, the next step towards sainthood after he was declared Venerable last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“There’s an abundance of people who say they prayed to Gaud\u00ed to get God to intervene to make their hips stop hurting, or something like that,” said Stanford<\/a>, author of the biography Gaud\u00ed: God’s Architect<\/a>, who worked with the Gaud\u00ed beatification committee<\/a> for three months.<\/p>\n

“The Vatican says it’s checked out one of these and they can think of no other explanation other than divine intervention, so they’ve now got a miracle in place,” he told Dezeen.<\/p>\n

“The Pope could declare him by the church’s own rules as blessed, so beatifying him, which is one step short of canonisation, but the Pope also has the power to chuck the rules out the window and just call him a saint.”<\/p>\n

\"Portrait
Peter Stanford told Dezeen that sainthood puts Gaud\u00ed “in too small a box”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many people would regard sainthood as appropriate for Gaud\u00ed, who strove to please God with his now legendary architectural work. He was a devout Christian throughout his life, so much so that caricaturists in the early 20th century depicted him as a monk.<\/p>\n

But Stanford argues that sainthood gives a one-dimensional impression of Gaud\u00ed, and would lead some to assume he was wholly good his whole life, leaving out the grittier parts of his character that made him an interesting architect.<\/p>\n

“I worry that the move towards making him a saint reduces him slightly \u2013 it goes for a very narrow focus on him,” he said.<\/p>\n

“[Sainthood] reflects an extraordinary life of religious devotion, and that clearly was a very important part of him, but it puts him in too small a box. In terms of people who could be in the biggest box possible or no box at all, Gaud\u00ed seems to me to be a very good example, because his imagination knew no boundaries,” Stanford continued.<\/p>\n

“I don’t mean that Gaud\u00ed was in any way a kind of bad man or unsaintly. But there were other sides of his character \u2013 he was bad-tempered, he was stubborn, he was litigious. He was a difficult character, probably like lots of people who live on their own.”<\/p>\n

\"Gaud\u00ed:
He recently wrote a book on the architect, titled Gaud\u00ed: God’s Architect<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his latest book, Stanford aims to bring together the two sides of Gaud\u00ed’s legacy that are often looked at separately \u2013 his faith and his architecture.<\/p>\n

“There are two sorts of coverage of Gaud\u00ed \u2013 the ultra-religious who print material through the lens of his saintliness, and then there is this whole other literature written by architects or architectural historians that, in the crudest of senses, try to understand how he fits in the canon of architecture,” Stanford said.<\/p>\n

“It felt to me there was space in between and neither side was listening to the other.”<\/p>\n

“The starchitect would not have appealed to him”<\/strong><\/p>\n

The book title and the nickname attributed to Gaud\u00ed, “God’s architect”, stems from when people would ask the architect when the slowly progressing Sagrada Fam\u00edlia would be finished \u2013 Gaud\u00ed’s response being, “my client is in no hurry” while looking up at God.<\/p>\n

Gaud\u00ed strove to achieve divine perfection in his buildings, especially in the later part of his life, which Stanford said ultimately left him depressed for failing to achieve it.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think he felt any formal vocation to priesthood, but there was a sense in which he regarded his work as a vocation,” said Stanford.<\/p>\n

“He was depressed because there was a feeling that he was failing to match up to God’s perfection \u2013 he was driven by something other than commercial gain or fame. The starchitect would not have appealed to him.”<\/p>\n

The influence of Gaud\u00ed’s unusual, organically shaped and intricately detailed buildings is felt far and wide, within the architecture field and beyond.<\/p>\n