There are coincidences that are not accidental. In the same year that Argentina deeply discusses its economic model (ideas about zero deficit, opening up to the world, the role of the State, what it means to produce wealth and for what purpose), Rome paved the way to beatify the first businessman in the modern history of the Church. His name was Enrique Shaw, he was Argentine, and he died more than sixty years ago convinced that economics and morality are not two separate or opposing discussions.
Shaw's life speaks not only to Catholics. It speaks to anyone who has understood that work dignifies, that well-managed wealth is not a sin but a responsibility, and that no people can free themselves from poverty if they do not first free their capacity to create.
Who was Enrique Shaw?
He was born in Paris in 1921, at the Ritz hotel, the son of Alejandro Shaw (founder of the bank that bore his name) and Sara Tornquist. Enrique lost his mother when he was just a child. He was educated at La Salle School in Buenos Aires and entered the Naval School, where he graduated as the youngest officer in the Argentine Navy, with one of the best averages of his generation. Upon falling in love, he requested a discharge to prioritize his family: he married Cecilia Bunge and together they had nine children.
He was the general manager of Cristalerías Rigolleau for sixteen years. And there he built what made him different: he did not manage the company as a machine for generating profit at any cost, but as a community of people. He also founded and presided over the Christian Association of Business Leaders and helped establish the Universidad Católica Argentina. In 1955, during the religious persecution unleashed during Peronism, he was arrested for publicly expressing his faith. He died of cancer in 1962, at the age of 41.
Pope Francis himself mentioned him as an example time and again. “He was rich, but he was a saint,” he said.
In December 2025, the Vatican joyfully informed us that a miracle had occurred allowing for the initiation of his beatification: the inexplicable healing of a boy struck by a horse. He will then be the first blessed in history fully identified as a modern businessman.
