Saint Cristóbal Magallanes and Companions

In 1917 President Venustiano Carranza signed an anticlerical constitution, and when the Mexican bishops objected, the government answered with what L'Osservatore Romano calls "a strong negative reaction". ³⁵ From 1926 the persecution grew fiercer: foreign priests were expelled, and Catholic private schools and many of the Church's charitable works were closed. ³⁴⁵ Vatican News adds that on July 31, 1926, public worship was suspended in every church in the country, for the first time in 400 years. ⁵

Lay Catholics organized a "League for the Defence of Religious Freedom", and, in the words of L'Osservatore Romano, "without involving the hierarchy, took up arms in a guerrilla war known as the 'Cristero Movement'". ³ They looked to their priests for support. Some pastors were hostile to the rising; others gave their people spiritual support, knowing the danger. ³ Vatican News says most priests did not back the armed struggle but did not abandon their parishes either, and names Magallanes as one of them. ⁵

He was born at Totatiche on July 30, 1869, into a farming family, where, according to Vatican News, he learned to call on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Lady of the Rosary. ³⁵ He became the parish priest of his home town. ²⁵ The biography the Holy See published for the canonization describes a priest of ardent faith, a prudent guide to his brother priests, and a pastor who gave himself to the human as well as the Christian good of his people. ²

He was a missionary among the Huichol people, and Vatican News says he opened a mission among them at Azqueltán. ²⁵ It credits him with founding several schools, a home for orphans and a house for the elderly, and with preaching detachment from material goods while working to raise his neighbors' standard of living. ⁵ Both the Holy See and Vatican News remember him for spreading the Rosary. ²⁵

Vocations to the priesthood were, in the Holy See biography's phrase as translated here, the most carefully tended part of his vineyard. ² When the persecutors of the Church closed the seminary of Guadalajara, he offered to found one in his own parish to shelter and form future priests, and the biography says the harvest was abundant. ² Franciscan Media calls it what it had to be in those years: a clandestine seminary at Totatiche. ⁴

The sources answer differently, and partly because they mean different things by the word. Franciscan Media says of all 25 that "they all belonged to the Cristero movement, pledging their allegiance to Christ and to the Church that he established, to spread the Good News in society—even if Mexico's leaders had made it a crime to receive baptism or celebrate the Mass." ⁴ In that sense the word describes a loyalty rather than a militia.

Vatican News is speaking of the armed rising when it says that Magallanes did not join it. ⁵ He rejected violence outright, it says, pointing out that neither Jesus nor the apostles had used it, and held that the Church's only weapon was the word of God; he said as much in a newspaper article. ⁵ He also stayed with his people, and Vatican News gives that as the reason he was arrested. ⁵

Federal troops arrested him at dawn on May 21, 1927, according to Vatican News, on the charge of supporting the rebellion, though in its judgment he was condemned to death simply for being a priest. ⁵ Four days later, on May 25, he was shot at Colotlán, in Jalisco. ²³⁵ L'Osservatore Romano's biographies say that all 25 were killed by the state authorities without any trial. ³

He did not die alone. His assistant, Father Agustín Caloca, born at Teúl in Zacatecas in 1898, was killed the same day. ²³ The Holy See biography says that, facing the firing squad, Magallanes comforted the younger priest with words translated here as "Calm yourself, son; only a moment, and then heaven." ² Then he turned to the soldiers. In the Holy See's Spanish he said that he was dying innocent and asked God that his blood might serve the union of his Mexican brothers. ² L'Osservatore Romano's English gives the words as "I pray to God that my blood serves the unity of my Mexican brethren". ³ Vatican News addresses the first words to "hermanos", brothers, rather than to a son, and runs both sayings together. ⁵

Our Sunday Visitor of July 3, 1927, reported from Mexico City the "summary killing" of three priests, "Cristobal Magallanes and his assistant, Father Caloca" among them. ⁹ That November the Catholic weekly America printed a letter from Leon Velasco of St. Louis listing what he called "the honor roll of our martyred priests", with Magallanes "shot in Colotlan on May 25 by order of Lieutenant Enrique Medina" and his assistant shot "in company with Father Magallanes". ⁸ Of the sources used here, only that letter names the officer; the Church's later biographies do not. ²³⁵⁸

L'Osservatore Romano counts 22 priests and three young laymen who went with their pastors to their deaths, and says almost all were tortured and executed where they had been arrested, at night, for fear of how the faithful would react. ³ Franciscan Media stresses that they did not die as a single group but over 22 years in eight Mexican states, most of them in Jalisco and Zacatecas. ⁴ Vatican News's Spanish page says he was shot at Colotlán "together with 24 companions" and then names them, but the dates L'Osservatore Romano gives for each run from 1915 to 1937. ³⁵ John Paul II placed them in "the first 30 years of the 20th century", though the last of them died in 1937. ¹³

The first was Father David Galván, who pointed to his chest to show his executioners where to shoot, on January 30, 1915. ³ Father Luis Batis was shot on August 15, 1926, with three laymen: Manuel Morales, a husband and father of three who had tried to plead for the priest's release, and the cousins Salvador Lara and David Roldán, both active in Catholic Action. ³⁴ Father Mateo Correa, threatened with death unless he revealed what he had heard in confession, told his captors, "You can do it, but don't forget that a priest must keep the secret of confession. I am willing to die". He was shot on February 6, 1927. ³

Father Julio Álvarez said softly, "My crime is being God's minister. I forgive you all", and was shot on a pile of garbage on March 30, 1927. ³ Father Rodrigo Aguilar answered the question "Who lives?" three times with "Christ the King and Our Lady of Guadalupe!" and was hanged from a mango tree that October. ³ Father Miguel de la Mora was shot while praying the Rosary. ³ Father Toribio Romo was shot on February 25, 1928, and the last, Father Pedro de Jesús Maldonado, died on February 11, 1937. ³

They were beatified on November 22, 1992, and canonized eight years later. ³⁴ John Paul II canonized them in Rome on May 21, 2000, during the Jubilee pilgrimage of Mexicans, in the same Mass as two Mexican founders, José María de Yermo y Parres and María de Jesús Sacramentado Venegas. ¹ He said the martyrs "all freely and calmly accepted martyrdom as a witness to their faith, explicitly forgiving their persecutors". ¹

He closed by entrusting the Church to Our Lady of Guadalupe, "to whom the martyrs prayed at the supreme moment of their sacrifice". ¹

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Cristóbal Magallanes or for his companions, so none is given here. ²³⁴⁵ John Paul II presented them as "an example to the whole Church and to Mexican society in particular". ¹

Saint Cristóbal Magallanes and his companions share one feast, on May 21. ⁴⁶ In the calendar of the dioceses of the United States the day is an optional memorial, entered under the English form of his name as "Saint Christopher Magallanes, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs". ⁷ It is not the anniversary of his death, which was May 25. ²³ May 21 is the date of the canonization in 2000, and, according to Vatican News, the date of his arrest in 1927. ¹⁵

He would not take up arms and would not leave his parish, and according to Vatican News it was the staying that cost him his life. ⁵ He was charged with supporting a rebellion he had argued against in print. ⁵ Keeping clear of violence did not keep him safe, and the sources do not pretend it did.

Much of his work was for people he would never see serve. He founded a seminary in his parish when the diocese's own was closed, so that young men could still be trained for the priesthood. ²⁴ It was slow work, done for a Church whose future he had no way of seeing.

At the end he spoke first to a frightened younger priest and then to the men about to shoot them both. ² To one he promised heaven in a moment; for the others he asked that his blood serve the union of his people. ²³ John Paul II said that all 25 explicitly forgave their persecutors. ¹

The list of his companions is hard reading. A father of three was killed for asking that his priest be spared; a priest died rather than say what he had heard in confession; another was shot on a pile of garbage. ³ The Church remembers them on one day without smoothing any of it over, and with them the man whose name stands first.