Blessed Javier Gorosterratzu

Javier Gorosterratzu Jaunarena (Urroz de Santesteban, Navarre, August 28, 1877 – Cuenca, August 10, 1936) was a Spanish Catholic priest and historian. Born into a Basque-speaking farming family, he joined the Redemptorists at the age of 16. After completing his postulancy in Astorga and his novitiate in Nava del Rey, he was ordained a priest in 1893 and studied theology in Astorga, where he later served as a professor of philosophy and science. After moving to Pamplona in 1913, Madrid in 1927, Pamplona again in 1930, and Cuenca in 1933, he was murdered by Popular Front militias during the early stages of the Spanish Civil War. His most important work was Don Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, gran estadista, escritor y prelado (Pamplona, 1925), an exhaustive biography of the Archbishop of Toledo that received the Royal Academy of History's Talent Award in 1926. He also wrote a biographical review of Sister Josefa de San Alfonso, published in Zaragoza in 1922, and translated Arnaud Oihenart's Notitia utriusque Vasconiæ, tum ibericæ, tum aquitanicæ into Spanish.