Sunday, May 4, 2008

Saint Lucy Kim Nusia: Virgin and Martyr (c. 1817-1839)

Upon losing both her parents, the young Catholic maiden Lucy Kim Nusia, a native of Korea, sold the little she had to pay for her parents’ funeral. She then consecrated herself to God with a vow of chastity. In April of 1839, Lucy and three other Korean Catholic women surrendered themselves to the pagan authorities, making before them an open declaration of their faith. The women were thereupon arrested and repeatedly tortured. When during one interrogation a judge asked Lucy whether she had ever seen the God she believed in, the young woman replied, “When I look at the sky, the earth, and all the living beings, I believe in the great King and Father of all who created them.” Remaing steadfast in their faith, Lucy and the three other women were further tortured and suffered privatons of food and water. To relieve their hunger, Lucy cut off her long hair and sold it to purchase porridge for the four of them. In a letter to friends, she observed, “When will the Lord call me? I do not know, so please pray to God for us.” On July 20, 1839, Lucy was beheaded a the age of twenty-two together with seven other Catholics.

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Blessed Julian Carrasquer Fos and Companions: Religious and Martyrs († 1936)

Julian Carrasquer Fos was the superior of a house of Hospitallers of Saint John of God in Calafell, Spain. On July 25, 1936 as the Spanish Civil War began, the Hospitallers’ institute was seized by Communist militiamen. The soldeirs stripped the brothers of their religious habits and removed all religious images from the building. In this hostile environment, the brothers persevered in their daily labors and increased their prayers. After being provided with the necessary papers to leave for France, nineteen of the religious set out from Calafell on July 30. That same day, they were ambushed by militiamen. All but four of the religious were taken out to be shot by firing squad. Those martyred included the superior Brother Julian and six other professed brothers, one of whom was a priest (Braulio Maria Correz Diaz de Cerio), as well as eight novices. Before dying from nine gunshots, the twenty-seven-year-old novice Domingo Pitarch Gurrea entrusted to the executioners his crucifix and his rosary beads, soaked in his own blood, asking that they be given to his mother.
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Friday, October 26, 2007

Blessed Primo Martinez Casillo and Companions († 1936)

Brother Primo Martinez Castillo was the superior of a house of Hospitallers of Sant John of God that ran a newly founded apostolic school, a “juniorate” for young aspirants to the congregation, located in Talavera de la Reina, near Toledo, Spain. At the outset of the Spanish Civil War in July of 1936, Brother Primo, sensng imminent danger to the school, sent his youngest students home. On July 23 agents of the anti-Cathlic Popular Front came and searched the school for weapons. They returned to make another search on July 25. Although they found nothing, they arrested the sixty-seven-year-old Brother Primo andthree fellow religious. Federico Rubio Alvarez was a seventy-four-year-old priest of the congregation. Jeronimo Ochoa Urgdangarin, thirty-two, and Jaun de la Cruz Delgado Pastor, twenty-two, were Hospitaller brothers. That same day, the four religious were shot to death by Popular Front militiamen.
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Saturday, June 30, 2007

Blessed Joseph Imbert (c. 1720-1794)

Having served as a Jesuit professor until the French government supressed the Jesuits in the 1760’s, Father Joseph Imbert became a prish priest for the French diocese of Moulins. In 1790 the anti-Catholic Jacobin regime of the French Revolution ordered all priests to take the anti-papal oath of the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy.” As one of many to refuse the oath, Father Imbert had to go into hiding to continue his priestly ministry in secret. When the Jacobins expelled his bishop, Father Imbert was chosen to oversee the diocese as vicar apostolic. After being captured in 1793, he was sent in 1794 on a protracted journey with twenty-four other priests to the city of Rochefort to await deportation there. Along the way, Father Imbert encouraged his ellow priests by composing for them a rallying song, “The Priests’ Marseillaise,” setting the words to the melody of the Jacobins’ famous battle anthem. He died on June 9, 1794, one of over five hundred priests and religious to perish from the horrible conditions aboard the prison ships of Rochefort.
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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Did You Know?

I’ve been picking on Reformation-era England with my category “Catholic Martyrs of Protestant England’s Reign of Religious Tolerance” because I heard once too many times how much more tolerant those Protestants were than those heinous Catholics. (Again let me state for the record that I don’t believe that Catholics should have killed for their faith EITHER.) But you know what? There seems to be a blindspot in the historical records in general with respect to the persecution of Catholics in general. I studied both the French and Mexican Revolutions in elementary school, in junior high, high school and college and the systematic persecution of Catholics must have slipped the minds of the authors of my history books. Growing up as a Protestant I knew about Dietrich Bonhoffer and the Ten Boom family but heard how the Catholic Church cooperated with the Nazis. There was no mention of Maximilian Kolbe or the barracks and barracks of priests who were interned in Dachau and other concentration camps. I didn’t know about the priests and nuns in Spain who were dragged into the streets and summarily shot in more than one country in Europe. I didn’t know about the Japanese Catholics that were crucified with their priests crucified with them. I didn’t know about the Catholic martyrs in Vietnam and other places. And so I would like to introduce you to some of these martyrs in places close to us in time and in histories that perhaps you didn’t know as well as you thought. Starting with…. 

Blessed José Trinidad Trinidad Rangel Montano, priest and martyr (1887-1927) of Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico, was ordained a priest at the age of thirty-one. The years of his priestly ministry were characterized by humility, simplicity, and zeal for sould. Early in 1927 the anti-Catholic regime governing Mexico forced Father Rangel out of his parish on the pretext that he had failed to report his priestly identity to the, He found refuge in the Catholic home of Josefina Alba and her sister Jovita, who were sheltering another priest in hiding, (Blessed) Andres Sola y Molist. The two priests encouraged each other. Turning down the suggestion of his brother that he should escape to the United States, Father Rangel accepted an invitation to celebrate the liturgical rites of Holy Week secretly in a friary of the Minim congregation. The holy days gave him the opportunity to administer the sacraments, particularly to hospital patients. On April 22, 1927, Father Rangel was found and arrested. Resolutely unwilling to deny his priestly identity even under torture, he was shot to death on April 25.

I highly recommend subscribing to Magnificat, I am only picking out an occasional one of these.

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