Relationship of Leo XIV with the Spanish martyrs of the twentieth century and the Valley of the Fallen

Pope Leo XIV carries on his pectoral cross, among others, a relic of an Agustino Bishop, Mons. Anselmo Polanco, who was killed during the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that gave rise to the Valley of the Fallen, built to pray for peace and reconciliation.

In addition to carrying fragments of bones of San Agustín and his mother, Santa Monica, and the venerable Agustino Giuseppe Bartolomeo Menochio, the cross of the Pontiff has two relics of Spanish Augustinian bishops: Santo Tomás de Villanueva, archbishop of Valencia and reformer of the Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Mons.

Mons. Polanco was born in 1881 in a small town in Palencia, in northern Spain, and formed at the Real College Seminary of Valladolid. At age 15 he received the Augustinian habit, one of the Mendicant orders with Trinitarios, Franciscanos, Dominicos, Carmelitas, Mercedarios and Servitas.

After training in Germany, he was appointed prior of the Augustinian province of the Philippines. In 1935 he was appointed Bishop of Teruel and Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Albarracín.

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, after months of acts of persecution against Catholics by the government of the Second Republic, and despite having the option of abandoning the diocese, he decides to remain.

Between December 1937 and February 1938, the Battle of Teruel occurs on the grounds of its ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in which about 40,000 soldiers of the two sides died.

On January 1, 1938, Mons. Polanco celebrated his last Eucharist at the Teruel Seminar and eight days later he is arrested, remaining a prisoner of the Republican forces for 13 months.

On February 7, 1939, when there were less than two months left to end the war, he was handcuffed and carried in a truck with other prisoners to the Can Tretze ravine, where he was shot.

Blessed Anselmo Polanco thus became the thirteenth Spanish prelate killed during those years of religious persecution. He was beatified on October 1, 1995 by San Juan Pablo II and his remains rest in the Cathedral of Teruel along with those of his vicar general, also martyr, Felipe Ripoll.

A visit with young people to the Valley of the Fallen

In 2003 it took place at the Fray Luis de León Congress Center located in Guadarrama, town of the Sierra de Madrid and very close to the Valley of the Fallen, the International Meeting of Agustinian youth under the slogan “Together to do, of these times, better times”, to which the prior general, Father Robert Prevost, today Leo XIV.

This fact is highlighted as part of the History of the Spanish Augustinian Federation on your website. During those summer days, one of the scheduled activities was a visit to the Valley of the Fallen, the monumental complex built after the Spanish Civil War where to pray for peace and reconciliation among the Spaniards.

In the Pontifical Basilica excavated in the rock, on which the largest cross in the world rises, thousands of combatants of both sides are buried among which are numerous martyrs.

The future Pope Leo XIV went with several dozen Augustinian young people, with whom he took a photo in the staircases that lead to the entrance door of the basilica. Thus, it can be seen with white shirt, in the first row surrounded by young people who wear blue t -shirts.

The fact that the Pontiff knows the Valley of the Fallen has been perceived by some as a door of hope for the future of the monumental complex, especially when the Government of Spain has launched a controversial process of “resignification” of its nature.

An agreement between the Spanish Executive and the Holy See, in which Cardinal José Cobo has participated as a mediator, to carry out these modifications, has aroused the rejection of a part of the Spanish faithful.

When the public tender specifications were known to carry out the project, which would include modifications even in the Board of the Most Holy, the prelates assured that “the terms of the agreement between the Government and the Holy See are general and They have never stopped in the details or particularities of the same”.