Antoni Tort Reixachs, a jeweler from Barcelona with 11 children, and Gaietà Clausellas Ballvé, chaplain of the shelter run by the Little Sisters of the Elderly Forsaken in Sabadell, were beatified this Saturday, November 23, in the basilica of the Sagrada Familia.
The Catholic Church thus recognizes the martyrdom they suffered during the religious persecution unleashed in Spain in the tumultuous first half of the 20th century.
“We can add two more brothers to the list of those who faced religious persecution and death with courage and hope, forgiving their murderers,” writes the Archbishop of Barcelona, Juan José Omella. “They acted like Christ on the Cross.”
“The martyrdom of Gaietà and Antoni should help us to face the crosses of each day with love, serenity, and hope,” he continues.
Their beatification “confirms their holiness” and invites us “to live and incarnate in the world the Gospel of love, peace, fraternity, and forgiveness,” he adds.
Cardinal Omella will preside over the celebration of the beatification together with the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, and Salvador Cristau, Bishop of Terrassa, the diocese to which the priest Gaietà belonged.
A goldsmith of firm faith
Antoni was born in 1895. He married Maria Josefa Gavín in 1917. They had 11 children. He was a jeweler by profession and lived in the center of Barcelona.
He had a strong faith, prayed daily, and participated in local church activities and pilgrimages to Marian shrines.
The year of the outbreak of the civil war in Spain, he took the risk of welcoming Bishop Manuel Irurita, his secretary, four nuns, and his own brother Francisco into his home.
According to witnesses quoted by the Archbishopric of Barcelona, at the end of 1936 militiamen came to his house and searched it.
One of them took the ciborium with the Eucharist. The goldsmith took it from him saying, “You can’t touch my Lord.”
And he distributed Communion among the clandestine community with whom he had been sharing a roof.
Antoni was arrested and, together with his brother, executed on the night of December 3 against the wall of the Moncada cemetery.
The father of the poor
Gaietà Clausellas was born in Sabadell, in 1863 and was ordained a priest in 1888. He initially exercised his ministry in several parishes. Then, starting in 1916, he ministered at the shelter run by the Little Sisters of the Elderly Homeless in Sabadell.
He stood out for his creative humility and his dedicated, discreet ,and courageous service to the needy, which earned him the nickname “father of the poor.”
“He, without having any special prominence, knew how to respond to the concerns and challenges of each moment,” writes Bishop Cristau.
“Without making noise, with respect, putting into practice what he had received from God: love, forgiveness, service, fraternity,” he adds.
Because of anticlericalism and social unrest, he was offered the chance to flee Spain for safety. But he preferred to stay and take care of elderly and the sick.
“I promised my predecessor in this office and the founder that I would never abandon the elderly of the Shelter, and that, if this means that I have to shed my blood, I fully accept it and offer my life to God,” he said, according to the Relatio et vota.
Executed in a ditch
On August 14, 1936, they came to arrest him and to shoot him. The 73-year-old priest went out serene, praying the Te Deum.
The next day, early in the morning, he was executed on the road to Matadepera, in a ditch near the hermitage of Sant Julià d'Altura.
“From now on we can invoke his intercession to obtain the gifts of strength in faith, of effective service in the cause of the poor, and of forgiveness without measure for all offenses,” says Msgr. Blai Blanquer in the diocesan Sunday leaflet. Blanquer participated in the compilation of the documentation for the beatification.
“May the blood of the martyr be—now also—the seed of those Christians that God is waiting for and that our world needs,” he adds.
65 years of study
The Church has spent more than 65 years studying the life and death of Gaietà and Antoni. Their causes for beatification were opened in 1959.
And on April 13 of this year, 2024, Pope Francis approved the Decree recognizing their martyrdoms.
Thus, the Church recognizes them as witnesses to the faith to a high degree because they didn’t even try to save their lives, but gave them up because of other people’s hatred for the faith.
