Torreciudad is a shrine dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Aragon in the north of Spain. Devotion to Our Lady of Torreciudad dates back to the eleventh century. The new Shrine, built under the with many others of the founder of Opus Dei, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, was inaugurated on 7 July 1975. He said that what he hoped for from the shrine were "spiritual fruits: graces that the Lord will wish to grant to all who come to honour his Blessed Mother at her shrine. These are the miracles I desire: conversions, and peace for many souls." With this in mind, he asked for confessional chapels to be built and for everything to be done to enable people to pray at the Shrine in peace.

The Shrine is the centre of all that goes on in Torreciudad. The church, opened for public worship on 7 July 1975, was built by members of Opus Dei with many others carrying out the wishes of Saint Josemaría to honour Our Lady and be a means of spiritual renewal through the Sacrament of Penance. The Opus Dei Prelature is responsible for the spiritual care of the Shrine and of the Social Training Centre. The building is the work of the architect Heliodoro Dols.

In the great altarpiece, set in a niche above the choir stalls, is the original Romanesque carved statue of Our Lady of Torreciudad, Queen of the Angels. Around the statue there are eight sculptured groups representing some of the main events in Our Lady´s life: her Betrothal to St. Joseph, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Flight into Egypt, the Workshop at Nazareth, the Crucifixion of Our Lord, and the Coronation of Our Lady in Heaven. This altarpiece is the work of the sculptor Juan Mayné. It was carved in alabaster in José Miret´s workshop. The polychrome artist was Emilio Juliá.

To the left of the main altar, is the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament where one is confronted by the Crucifix of Torreciudad— a gift to the shrine from St. Josemaria Escriva.

Mounted in the center of the marble altarpiece, the approximately 6’ sculpture depicts Jesus Christ alive and serene, a Christ that looks as if he could speak. But he does speak to us there in the quiet and dimness of the chapel. He invites us in our personal prayer to contemplate his suffering which he endured out of love for each one of us. As St. Josemaria wrote in his meditations on the Stations of the Cross (The Way of the Cross):“So much do I love Christ on the Cross that every crucifix is like a loving reproach from my God: ‘…I suffering, and you… a coward. I loving you, and you forgetting me. I begging you, and you… denying me. I, here, with arms wide open as an Eternal Priest, suffering all that can be suffered for love of you… and you complain at the slightest misunderstanding, over the tiniest humiliation…'”

It is important to note that the crucifix is not made of gold but gilded bronze. Yet the brilliance that mimics gold can serve to remind us of the vessels (chalices, patens, and ciboria) that hold his body and blood for us to consume, to become other Christs, Christ himself.

Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, St. Josemaria’s successor and closest collaborator, described St Josemaria’s devotion to the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ, especially in the Stations of the Cross and depictions of the passion and death of Jesus Christ:“From the time I first met him, I noticed that not only during his personal prayer, but also whenever he preached a meditation or gave a class, and all the time he spent working at this desk, he kept before him a crucifix—and always the same one… He also advised us always to carry a crucifix with us and to place it in from of us before beginning to study, to read, to work, and so forth, in order to remain in the presence of God and thus transform our work into prayer, uniting it to the sacrifice of the cross.