Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicasterio for the causes of the saints, presided this Saturday, July 12, the beatification mass of Brother Marist Lycarion May (François Benjamin), killed by hate to faith in 1909 during the so -called “tragic week” of Barcelona.
As reported Vatican Newsthe Mass was held in the church of San Francisco de Sales in Barcelona.
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In his homily, Cardinal Semeraro recalled that the tragic week, between July 26 and August 2, 1909, occurred in Barcelona and other locations in Catalonia, mainly in protest of the mandatory military service decreed by the Spanish government for the Melilla War in Morocco, which caused looting and fires, also of churches, convents and Catholic colleges.
Brother Lycarion was then director of a school for the working class called the Laboro de San José Board of Trustees, the first to be burned because of the revolt.
In his homily, the purple stressed that “whoever loves his life loses her, and who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life,” which does not mean that there is contempt for one’s life, but that the religious was able to get out of himself to give himself to others.
His life, the cardinal continued, was “a true act of love and service” to others, which made him white for anarchists and anticlericals who did not want the church. “His martyrdom can be considered as the summit and seal of his life,” said the cardinal.
Who was Brother Lycarion?
François Benjamin May, whose name as a religious was Lycarion, was born on July 21, 1870 in Bagnes, Switzerland. At 18 he entered the Marist Brothers Institute.
On August 15, 1888 he took the name of Lycarion and was sent to Mataró, in Catalonia. He made his perpetual profession on August 15, 1893 and was transferred to the community of Girona. After an experience in the Basque Country as director of a nursery, he was sent to Barcelona to found and direct the Patronato Obrero School of San José, located in Pueblo Nuevo, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Barcelona.
According Vatican Newsthe new Blessed said that “to go to Pueblo Nuevo you have to be willing to give life.”
During the tragic week, on the night of July 26 to 27, the Marista school was. On the morning of 27 they opened fire against the religious. Brother Lycarion was reached and his body was mutilated.
The postulator of the cause of Brother Lycarion, Fray Guillermo José Villarreal Cavazos, told the Vatican media that the 39 -year -old Marist religious “was martyred in a conflicting world, a world similar to ours, between conflicts and wars.”
The postulator also stressed that the new blessed “was a very present educator for its students, demonstrating that the Gospel is not mainly transmitted with preaching or masterful lessons, but with closeness, dialogue and respect.”
In January of this year, Pope Francis had approved the decree that recognizes the martyrdom of Brother Lycarion.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.