A scientist and educational pioneer will be the first Opus Dei lay member to be beatified. Guadalupe Ortiz was a Spanish chemist who worked hard to promote the dignity of poor rural women in Mexico. She will join St Josemaría Escrivá, a priest, and Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, a bishop, as the three members of the Prelature thus far raised to the altars.

As Opus Dei is primarily a lay organisation – 98 per cent of its members are lay, most of whom called to marriage while a smaller number live celibacy – Guadalupe’s beatification is particularly significant. When St Josemaría first preached in the 1930s and 40s that all men and women, and not just priests and religious, are called to be saints, he was even accused of heresy. Some priests in Spain and Italy visited the families of the new members to tell them their sons would be damned because they were being led to believe that they could be saints in the world. Today Guadalupe’s life is like a first proof of St Josemaría’s message, which would later be confirmed by the Second Vatican Council.