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Inauguration of a chapel in the Parish of Our Lady of the Angels (Madrid)

On September 29, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco, Archbishop of Madrid, blessed a chapel in honor of St. Josemaría in the parish of Our Lady of the Angels, in the district of Quatro Caminos. During the Mass, the Cardinal used the chalice that St. Josemaría had given to the parish in 1972. In the same ceremony the three new bells of the church were blessed. They were manufactured with contributions from the parishioners, some of them faithful of Opus Dei. The names of the bells are Our Lady of the Angels, St. Josemaría, and Bishop Álvaro del Portillo. At the foot of the chapel’s reredos are three plaques recalling the day Opus Dei was founded: “On the morning of October 2, 1928, feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, while hearing the sound of the bells of this parish, St. Josemaría received the light from God to begin Opus Dei, thus opening up a path of sanctity for many men and women, as ordinary Christians, through their professional, family, and social occupations in ordinary life.” The chapel has a painting by the Cadiz artist Ignacio Valdés de Elizalde which shows St. Josemaría on that October 2nd, kneeling and in an attitude of thanksgiving for the illumination he had just received. Next to this is an image of our Lady and a mural portraying various places in Madrid linked to the foundation of Opus Dei.

Romana, n. 47, July-December 2008, p. 318-319.

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