Teens, priests, pastoral workers and nun among martyrs beatified in Spain
November 3, 2021 at 2:23 p.m.
More than 100 victims of Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war moved a step closer to sainthood after being beatified as martyrs for the faith. They included two teenage boys as well as an 88-year-old nun who died of bullet wounds after being tied to a window as a human shield.
More than 3,000 people gathered Oct. 16 for the beatification Mass in Córdoba’s sixth-century cathedral for Father Juan Elías Medina and 126 fellow martyrs, all killed by anti-clerical forces at the start of the four-year conflict. The Mass brought to more than 2,000 the number beatified or canonized from the Spanish conflict, during which 2,000 churches were destroyed and up to 8,000 Catholic clergy and religious order members killed, along with a dozen bishops and tens of thousands of lay Catholics. Father Medina, from Castro del Río, was arrested in July 1936 while serving as rector of his home parish and was shot with 14 others at the town’s cemetery, after assuring his mother in a letter, found in his breviary, that he was “dying content.”The Córdoba Diocese said the 33-year-old priest had been noted for work among the poor and sick and had refused to deny his priesthood while held in a town hall basement. It added that the “brutal executions” had formed “part of a climate of persecution imposed by republican militia against all those daring to profess membership of the Church.”
Related Stories
Monday, December 29, 2025
E-Editions
Events
More than 100 victims of Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war moved a step closer to sainthood after being beatified as martyrs for the faith. They included two teenage boys as well as an 88-year-old nun who died of bullet wounds after being tied to a window as a human shield.
More than 3,000 people gathered Oct. 16 for the beatification Mass in Córdoba’s sixth-century cathedral for Father Juan Elías Medina and 126 fellow martyrs, all killed by anti-clerical forces at the start of the four-year conflict. The Mass brought to more than 2,000 the number beatified or canonized from the Spanish conflict, during which 2,000 churches were destroyed and up to 8,000 Catholic clergy and religious order members killed, along with a dozen bishops and tens of thousands of lay Catholics. Father Medina, from Castro del Río, was arrested in July 1936 while serving as rector of his home parish and was shot with 14 others at the town’s cemetery, after assuring his mother in a letter, found in his breviary, that he was “dying content.”The Córdoba Diocese said the 33-year-old priest had been noted for work among the poor and sick and had refused to deny his priesthood while held in a town hall basement. It added that the “brutal executions” had formed “part of a climate of persecution imposed by republican militia against all those daring to profess membership of the Church.”