Papst Leo würdigt argentinischen Unternehmer Enrique Shaw als Vorbild gelebter Laienheiligkeit
Pope Leo XIV held up Argentine businessman Enrique Shaw as a model of lay holiness during a speech in Buenos Aires, calling him a future Blessed and recalling his role in saving jobs at a glass company in 1961.
Pope Leo XIV has presented the Argentine businessman Enrique Shaw as a model of lay holiness, calling him a "future Blessed" during a speech in Buenos Aires on November 9. The pope addressed business leaders, unionists, workers and representatives of social movements at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, an institution Shaw helped to found and where he served as its first treasurer.
Shaw, a father of nine, was born in Paris in 1921 to Argentine parents and trained as a naval officer before entering business. He married Cecilia Bunge in 1943 and became managing director of the Rigolleau glass company. In 1952 he co-founded ACDE, a business association, and he also helped establish Caritas Argentina. According to the notes supplied for this report, he converted to Catholicism through the Church's social doctrine, and the pope framed his life as evidence that business can be understood as a community rather than merely as a source of capital.
The best-known episode of Shaw's career dates to 1961, when the American company Corning ordered about 1,200 layoffs in Argentina. Shaw, who was by then terminally ill, persuaded Corning to save all of the jobs. Workers, for their part, donated blood during his illness. Shaw died of cancer on August 27, 1962, at the age of 41.
The Church has already moved to advance his cause. Pope Francis declared Shaw venerable in 2021. On December 18, 2025, Pope Leo approved a decree recognising a miracle attributed to Shaw's intercession, which clears the way for his beatification. The notes do not give details of the alleged miracle.
The pope's choice of Shaw as an example was connected to his own intellectual inheritance. Pope Leo XIV has said that he chose his papal name partly in homage to Leo XIII and the encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891, the foundational Catholic text on labour, property and the dignity of workers. Shaw's life, in this framing, is an attempt to apply that social teaching in the daily work of enterprise.
Shaw's granddaughter, María Elena Critto, spoke to OSV News about his legacy. She stressed that for Shaw there was no division between faith and work, and that holiness was not a separate religious life reserved for clergy but something lived out in a professional vocation. The pope's message to the Argentine Industrial Conference in November 2025 carried a similar emphasis on the moral responsibilities of economic life.
Source: thecatholictelegraph.com
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