The Spanish martyrs

Faith and the World’s Hatred
The beatification of 498 martyrs of religious persecution in the Spanish Civil War is set to take place October 28th in Rome. This is a witness stronger than violence, compelling us to recognize the presence of God

by Fidel González Fernández

In Church tradition, the essence of the Christian concept of martyrdom has always been based on two factors: bearing public witness to Christ and voluntary submission to death as its confirmation. St. Augustine said that it is not submission to the death penalty but its motive that is the decisive factor in martyrdom. Were it not so, forced labor in the mines, for example, would produce many martyrs.
What is the cause of all these persecutions of the Church, especially since the Enlightenment? The cause is the attempt to expel faith from life, which in modern times goes hand-in-hand with the State’s claim to be to the absolute judge of morality. In this world, the Church has shown that it is the sole reality that has defended the person, the freedom of man, and society against all totalitarian systems. Though the circumstances have changed, at the bottom of all Christian persecutions we always find a concept of the State that is idolatrous, totalitarian, and immanent.
This was the context of the persecution of Catholics in Spain, planned expressly as the de-Catholicization of a country seen in many ways as the heartland of Catholicism. Curiously, it combined three elements: Freemasonry, anarchism, and Marxism.

Bishops, priests and workers
Who were the Spanish martyrs, especially those killed between 1931 and 1939? The figures speak clearly. The historian Antonio Montero has done the fullest and best-known study. His data show at least 6,832 verified cases of martyrdom, including thirteen bishops, 4,184 diocesan priests, 2,365 monks, and 283 nuns.
I studied a number of these cases and the last one struck me deeply. It was the martyrdom of Florentino Asensio Barroso, Bishop of Barbastro, who had taken up his ministry just six months before in a small diocese in the north of Spain. Almost in secrecy, the Bishop entered his diocese, then in the hands of Freemasons and anarchists, and devoted himself to preparing his priests for martyrdom. As he had expected, it was inflicted with extreme cruelty. The first to fall was his Vicar General, and he was present at the arrest of nearly all his priests. In this small diocese in the Pyrenees, there were 139 priests; 113 of them died martyrs. Also martyred were 51 Claretian missionaries, a number of theology students, a whole monastery of 18 Benedictine monks, and 8 Piarist fathers, who had a monastery and ran a school in the district. The Bishop himself was martyred. Like the others, he died blessing his executioners and forgiving them.
In the town where I was born, there was another case I’d like to mention. A parish priest was sacrificed on the altar of his church and before him, on the same night, three miners suffered the same fate. They were not priests; they were workers, but faithful to Christ. The Marxists killed them. Here we are faced with a parish priest in profound communion with three workers, who may not have known the catechism well, but who chose to follow Christ rather than a party from which, at that moment, they had everything to gain.

A Jacobin constitution
The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed in 1931 and lasted until March 1939. In that period, the persecution of Catholics went through numerous stages. Many of the deputies to the Constituent Cortes represented the most radical strands in republicanism: anticlerical and Masonic. The Constitution they passed had strong Jacobin overtones. These radical and secular groups wanted to decapitate the Church by murdering priests and all who remembered Christ.
The Spanish martyrs represented every category of the people of God. In the case of priests, nearly all were priests of the people and died in the midst of their flocks, crying out: “Viva Cristo Rey!” Their disfigured bodies were invariably buried with deep devotion and veneration.
Pius XI compared the Spanish persecutions to the first and fiercest persecutions of Christians.
Churches and monasteries were plundered and burnt, bishops, priests, and religious were subjected to violence, ecclesiastical property was confiscated, the activities inside churches were reduced, and the religious orders, their activities, and all public manifestations of the Catholic faith were restricted and subjected to close surveillance.
“Spain must cease to be Catholic,” declared one of the first presidents in Parliament. The Republic was formed by the Freemasons, soon joined by the social-communists and anarchists.
In October 1934, there was a foretaste of Bolshevik-Marxist revolution in the industrial and mining zone of the Asturias, with 14 days of blood and violence. It caused the massacre of 10 priests, 5 monks, 8 Christian Brothers, and 6 theology seminarians.
The persecutions continued and became violent against priests and religious after the triumph of the Popular Front in February 1936 and the outbreak of civil war in July. If a priest or monk was taken, he would be tortured or simply killed without a trial. Salvador Madariaga, one of the best-known liberal historians and supporters of the Republic, wrote, “No one who is honest and well-informed can deny the horrors of this persecution.” He concluded that, apart from the number of victims, what should be stressed is the extreme hatred against all that Catholicism represented.
In recent years, as historical consultant and theologian to the Congregation of Saints, I have studied various causes of these martyrs. What struck me in all these cases?
First of all, I established the existence of a theological hatred for Christ and His Church. This hatred was even more devilish in cases where the executioners were christened. They were Christians who had renounced Christ. Another point that struck me was the relentless hatred shown for priests. This was fueled by two factors, above all: their relationship with the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and their celibacy or consecrated virginity.

No defection
During the persecutions, there were no defections by priests, monks, or nuns. One case I wish to remember concerns the two bishops of Guadix and Almerìa. They were close friends. During the persecutions, the Bishop of Guadix, Don Manuel Medina Olmos, visited his old friend at Almerìa, wishing to be with him in his ordeal. They refused to escape when the captain of a British ship berthed in the harbor offered to take them aboard. “The shepherds must stay with their sheep till death,” they said. They died together, shot by order of the local Freemasons.
Another martyred bishop was Fr. Anselmo Polanco, an Augustinian and Bishop of Teruel. He died after being imprisoned for thirteen months together with his Vicar General Felipe Ripoll, who refused to abandon his bishop. The Republican government pressed him to make a declaration or sign a statement against his brothers in the episcopate. They tried to bribe him with freedom, honors, and even “promotion” to the diocese of Barcelona. But the sole honor he desired was to be faithful to Christ and His Church. He was imprisoned and then shot in February 1939 together with his faithful Vicar General.
This chapter in the history of the Spanish martyrs is a testimony to faith. It is also a call to priests and all Christians today to live their vocation: to look to Christ and follow Him, in devotion and service to the Church until death, with a deep, disinterested love for all men and their destiny.


TRAGIC STATISTICS
On February 16, 1936, the Popular Front, which combined all the left-wing and secular-radical parties, won the elections. The nation fell into chaos. In the first six months of the year, there were 113 general strikes, 146 dynamite attacks with a death toll of 269, 1,287 people injured in disorders, murders, and personal vendettas. The most extremist wings of the political parties in power (social-communists, anarchists, and radicals with a strongly Masonic ideology) had a precise plan: to bring the Bolshevik revolution to Spain on the model of the Soviet revolution of 1917. The government parties failed to maintain democracy. The country was ravaged by civil war for three years, until the victory in 1939 by the nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco. In these three years, the most murderous attacks on the Catholic Church and persecutions of its followers took place. The historian Antonio Montero, who has carried out the fullest and best-known study of the persecutions, states there were 6,832 martyrs, including 13 bishops. The victims included 4,184 diocesan priests, 2,365 monks, and 283 nuns. In some dioceses like Barbastro in the Pyrenees, 113 priests were martyred out of a total of 139, including the bishop. Those murdered also included 5 diocesan seminarians, 51 Claretian missionaries, 18 Benedictine monks, and 9 Piarists.