Gaudi could be first artist-saint.

Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi is famous for his avant-garde designs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including major works like the Sagrada Familia church, Park Guell, and Casa Batllo in Barcelona. But many people don't know that the man behind those creations was also a devout Catholic, a mystic, and could one day be the first-ever professional artist to be canonized. Michelangelo, Rafael, Mozart, and many other Catholic artists who have created some of the world's most famous religious masterpieces have never been beatified or canonized. Blessed Fra Angelico is the only possible exception, although The Tablet of London notes that Angelico's true profession was being a friar, and painting was a secondary vocation.

Gaudi was a layman, which also makes him stand out as an oddity among male saints, who are mostly clerics. Those promoting his cause for sainthood say they have evidence of miracle cures and divine favors granted through Gaudi's intercession.

Successful and very wealthy at a young age, Gaudi was said to be arrogant, extravagant, and even unkind. But when the woman he loved refused to marry him, it began in him a conversion to a life devoted to God, asceticism, and prayer. "Life is love, and love is sacrifice," he was known to say.

He lived in intentional poverty, dressing simply and eating minimally. Because of his scruffy appearance, when he was struck by a tram car in Barcelona in 1926, he was taken to a hospital for the poor and indigent. When his friends found him there days later, Gaudi re fused to be moved to a higher-class hospital, assuring his friends: "Here is where I belong." He died two days after the accident at age 74.