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On November 9, in Seville, Spain, Fr. José Torres Padilla — co-founder of the congregation of the Sisters of the Company of the Cross — was beatified. Fr. Torres Padilla was an important figure in the Catholic Church in Andalusia, which at the time was plagued by poverty and illness. He was born in the Canary Islands in 1811 and died in Seville in 1878.
At the Angelus on November 10, 2024, Pope Francis commented on the event. “He lived in 19th-century Spain, and distinguished himself as a priest confessor and spiritual guide, bearing witness to great charity with those in need. May his example sustain priests in their ministry.” Then, as is the tradition at Angelus celebrations, he invited the crowd to applaud the new Blessed.
The miracle for his beatification
A sister of the Company of the Cross — a religious community founded by Fr. Torres Padilla and St. Ángela del a Cruz — was the person healed through the priest’s intercession, making the beatification possible.
The postulator of the cause, Fr. Salvador Aguilera, told Vatican News that she had been suffering from a “massive bilateral pulmonary embolism and pulmonary infarction.” That is to say, blood clots had blocked the arteries in both her lungs, some tissues of which had consequently died. Faced with such grave and irreversible damage to vital organs, she was entrusted to the prayers of Fr. Torres Padilla, and she made an inexplicable recovery.
The life of Fr. José Torres Padilla
Fr. José Torres Padilla, born in 1811 on the Canary island of La Gomera, was marked by two events in his childhood. The first was his miraculous survival after a fall into a well; the second was the nearly simultaneous death of his parents. His mother, devastated by illness and the death of her husband, also died a few moments later.
After studying in Tenerife and Seville, José Torres Padilla was ordained a priest in 1836. He taught ecclesiastical history and patrology at the seminary in Seville, and founded the congregation of the Sisters of the Company of the Cross with the nun Angela de La Cruz (who was canonized in 2003). Later, he was called to Rome as a consultor to the Commission for Ecclesiastical Discipline. In this capacity, he was involved in the organization of the First Vatican Council.
Returning to Seville in 1871, he became a canon of the cathedral and resumed his ministry as confessor and spiritual director, with a particular focus on the poor. He quickly earned the nickname “el Santo” — “the saint” — even before his death in 1878. At his beatification Mass in Seville on November 9, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, paid tribute to his “profound unity with the Lord” and his “inner strength” which enabled him to combine “contemplation” and “action.”
