With a massive mass celebrated In the Sanctuary of the Mexican martyrs in Tlaquepaque, in the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico), the Catholic Church commemorated the 25 years of the Canonization of San Cristóbal Magallanes and its 24 martyrs, killed by hate to faith during the religious persecution undertaken in the 1920s by the Mexican government against the Catholic.
The Mass was chaired by the Archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal José Francisco Robles Ortega, recently arrived from Rome, where he traveled to participate in the conclave that chose Pope Leo XIV.
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Mons. Manuel González Villaseñor, auxiliary bishop of Guadalajara, pronounced the homily, remembering that in 2000 San Juan Paul II “he gave us 27 saints for our Church of Mexico: San Cristóbal Magallanes and companions, the majority priests, three laity; a priest also a Mexican teacher, San José María de Yermo and Parres Naty ”.
The prelate stressed that “today more than ever we need that desire to achieve holiness we have each of us in our hearts.”
“Maybe there were others who preferred to deny their faith before martyrdom, preferred to flee. They were not there to say alive Christ King, Long live Santa María de Guadalupe, and to be able to give life for others,” he said.
Religious persecution in Mexico
Anticlericalism intensified in Mexico since the mid -nineteenth century, but would reach its most serious point at the beginning of the 20th century, by the hand of legislation that restricted Catholic cult and religious education. The repression reached such an extent that faithful Catholics spontaneously rose in arms in various parts of the country against government repression in what is now known as “Cristero War” or “Christian.”
The Government murdered a large number of Catholics, both among those who had risen in arms to defend religious freedom and those who simply practiced their faith clandestinely.
The relations between the Catholic Church and the Mexican State would not be officially restored until 1992, with a constitutional reform that gave legal recognition to the Church that the Government had denied it for more than seven decades.
Religious freedom: a right conquered with martyrdom
Currently, said Mons. González Villaseñor in his homily, “thanks to the martyrdom of the holy martyrs, we can freely live the expression of our faith”, although he regretted that “there are still tendencies of a persecution, sometimes secret, against Catholic Christians.”
“However, they put the foundations for us to have more freedom, so we appreciate their testimony, and that’s why we venerate them, and that’s why we ask for their intercession,” he said.
Mons. González Villaseñor said that “today, more than ever, we also have to imitate their virtues to face so many challenges, many of them that go against faith, and that they are above all the loss of the presence of God in society, and in the heart of many, which are even called baptized.”
Mexico, a Catholic and Guadalupana homeland, but “bathed in blood”
“We have to imitate its example to be able to load that cross that we have taken in some way, that cross that the Lord Jesus sometimes wants to share with us, but we have to offer the sufferings for so many needs in the world, in our homeland, in this country so beautiful, which is still called Catholic and Guadalupana, but that is bathed by the blood of such violence.”
“Today we have to ask for the intercession of the martyrs, so that with their blood they achieved a pacification in our homeland, today our homeland again believes in Jesus, but not only in word, but above all with the works,” he encouraged the Mexican prelate.
David Ramos
Graduate in Communication Sciences by the Private University of the North in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working in ACI Press, I am based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered the trips of Pope Francis to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.