ST JOSEMARIA ESCRIVA SCC

José María Mariano Escrivá y Albás was born to José Escrivá y Corzán and his wife, María de los Dolores Albás y Blanc on 9 January 1902, in the small town of Barbastro, in Huesca, Spain, the second of six children and the first of two sons. José Escrivá was a merchant and a partner in a textile company that eventually went bankrupt, forcing the family to relocate in 1915 to the city of Logroño, in the northern province of La Rioja, where he worked as a clerk in a clothing store.^[15] Young Josemaría first felt that “he had been chosen for something”, it is reported, when he saw footprints left in the snow by a monk walking barefoot.^[16][17]

With his father’s blessing, Escrivá prepared to become a priest of the Catholic Church. He studied first in Logroño and then in Zaragoza, where he was ordained as deacon on Saturday, 20 December 1924. He was ordained a priest, also in Zaragoza, on Saturday, 28 March 1925. Beginning in 1922, he also studied law at the University of Zaragoza, receiving the corresponding licenciate degree in 1927.^[18]

After a brief appointment to a rural parish in Perdiguera, Escrivá went to Madrid in 1927 to pursue a doctorate in civil law at the Central University. In Madrid, Escrivá found employment as a private tutor and as a chaplain to the Foundation of Santa Isabel, which comprised the royal Convent of Santa Isabel and a school managed by the Little Sisters of the Assumption.^[19]