Saint José María Robles Hurtado

He was born on May 3, 1888, at Mascota, in the west of Jalisco, in what the Holy See's biography places in the Diocese of Tepic. ¹³ His parents were Antonio Robles and Petronila Hurtado. ⁴ The Knights of Columbus say he entered the conciliar seminary of Guadalajara in 1900, was a brilliant student, and as a deacon was made its vice-rector. ⁵ He worked for a time as a missionary at Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, and was ordained a priest at Guadalajara on March 22, 1913, at 25. ⁵⁶

He founded a congregation of women. The Archdiocese of Guadalajara says that after his ordination he founded at Nochistlán the Institute of the Religious Victims of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, today the Sisters of the Heart of Jesus in the Sacrament. ⁴ The Knights place the founding in Guadalajara, when he was 25; Columbia, the Knights' magazine, says it came two years after his ordination. ⁵⁶ In 2005 Columbia counted hundreds of the sisters across Mexico, with communities in Angola, Peru and the United States, among them parishes in California and South Carolina. ⁶

The Holy See's biography calls him a fervent apostle of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who wrote small works to spread it. ¹ Columbia adds newsletters, pamphlets and letters, published and handed out in defiance of the law. ⁶ The Guadalajara account says his companions nicknamed him "el loco del Sagrado Corazón", the madman of the Sacred Heart, and that his whole spirituality was built around that devotion. ⁴ He was devoted as well to the Eucharist and to Our Lady of Guadalupe. ⁵⁶

In December 1920 he was named parish priest of Tecolotlán. ⁴ The Knights list what he set up there: schools, a hospital, an asylum and circles for workers, as well as his congregation. ⁵ Columbia remembers the long hours he spent hearing confessions and the care he took of the sick of the parish. ⁶ When the government suspended public worship, the Guadalajara account says, he consecrated the parish to the Heart of Jesus and set up a cross on the hill called La Loma as a visible sign of it; the authorities took the cross as a challenge and began to close in on him. ⁴

On March 18, 1926, according to the Knights, the government of Jalisco decreed that every priest serving a church must be registered and authorized by the civil authorities. ⁵ Archbishop Francisco Orozco y Jiménez told his priests to stay in their parishes and not to register, and Robles did as he was told and preached openly against the decree. ⁵ When friends urged him to leave, the Knights say, his answer was "A pastor never abandons his sheep." ⁵

On December 12, 1926, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the mayor sent word that an order for his arrest had been issued. ⁵ He went into hiding, and the Knights say he came out briefly after the new year to lead the rededication of the cross on the hill, a year after it was raised. ⁵ From January 2, 1927, the Guadalajara account says, he lived hidden in the house of the Agraz family, keeping track of his parishioners and praying for peace in Mexico. ⁴ After February 26 he was told there was a warrant for the arrest of priests, and his friends begged him to flee; he would not. ⁴

Columbia, alone among these sources, says that after seeing so many Catholics killed he went so far as to promote their armed defense. ⁶ The Holy See's biography, the Guadalajara account and the Knights' page describe a pastor hiding among his people and do not say this. ¹⁴⁵

Before dawn on June 25, 1927, as he was getting ready to say Mass, he was arrested by a large detachment of soldiers. ⁴ The Knights note that it was the feast of the Sacred Heart that year, and that when the knock came he opened the door himself, said who he was and gave himself up. ⁵ The people of the town went through every legal means to save his life, and obtained a federal injunction, an amparo, without success. ⁴⁵ When General Jesús María Ferreira, commander of military operations in Jalisco, learned of the capture, he ordered that the priest be dealt with. ⁵

That night some women tried to see him. They were not allowed in, the Guadalajara account says, but one of the guards handed them his breviary, and in it they found a poem he had written. ⁴ The Holy See prints its opening lines as his last wishes, written shortly before he was killed. ¹ Columbia gives them in English: "I want to love your Heart / my Jesus with delirium; / I want to love you with passion, / I want to love you until Martyrdom." ⁶ It goes on to ask whether the moment of eternal union is near, and ends, in the Guadalajara text, with a Father waiting in heaven for all his children. ⁴⁶

The injunction protected him within the township of Tecolotlán, so it was decided to kill him beyond its boundary. ⁴⁵ Near midnight, with his hands tied, he was marched out along the road toward Ameca, and the soldiers stopped at an old oak near the village of Quila. ⁴⁵ Columbia, which calls the man holding the rope a friend of his, says he had a small devotional candle in his pocket and gave it to the soldiers stumbling in the dark, and that its light guided them up the hill. ⁶

There he asked for a few minutes, knelt and prayed. ⁴ He blessed his parish and, aloud, forgave and blessed his executioners. ⁴⁵ So that no one else would have his death on his hands, he took the rope, blessed it, kissed it and put it around his own neck. ⁴⁵ Columbia gives his words to the man holding it as "Don't dirty your hands." ⁶ ACI Prensa, quoting Joaquín Cardoso's book on the Mexican martyrs, gives his last words, translated here: "Yours, always yours, Eucharistic Heart of Jesus; Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!" ⁷

The Holy See and L'Osservatore Romano date his death June 26, 1927, at the Sierra de Quila, in what is now the Diocese of Autlán. ¹³ The Guadalajara account dates it June 25. ⁴ The Knights' account of an arrest on June 25 and a march that began close to midnight fits both. ⁵ The Guadalajara account says his body was left at the foot of the tree and buried by men from a charcoal works who did not know who he was; Columbia says the soldiers covered him in a shallow grave and sent word to the town. ⁴⁶

On June 26, 1932, with the permission of José Garibi Rivera, then auxiliary bishop of Guadalajara and his classmate at the seminary, his remains were moved from Quila to the Expiatory Temple in Guadalajara. ⁴ They are now venerated at the house of his sisters in Guadalajara, the novitiate by the archdiocese's account and the general house by the Knights'. ⁴⁵ Columbia records that he was a member of the Knights of Columbus, of Council 1979, and one of six Mexican priest-martyrs of the order canonized that day. ⁶

He was beatified with the others on November 22, 1992. ³ L'Osservatore Romano's entry for him is one line: born at Mascota on May 3, 1888, and "hanged from an oak tree on 26 June 1927." ³ John Paul II canonized the 25 on May 21, 2000, and did not name him in the homily; he said they "all freely and calmly accepted martyrdom as a witness to their faith, explicitly forgiving their persecutors." ² Their story together is told on this site under Saint Cristóbal Magallanes and Companions. ²³

No source used for this page names him the patron of anything. ¹⁴⁵⁶ His memory is kept by the sisters he founded, by the Knights of Columbus, who count him among their own, and by the people of Tecolotlán. ⁴⁵⁶

He is celebrated with Cristóbal Magallanes and his companions on May 21. ⁷⁹ In the calendar of the dioceses of the United States the day is an optional memorial, "Saint Christopher Magallanes, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs". ⁹ The Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, enters him on his own on June 26, near Guadalajara, as a priest and martyr who died hanging from a tree. ⁸ Columbia gives June 26 as his feast, the day of his martyrdom. ⁶

He was a priest with one devotion, and he did not keep it to himself: a congregation, a parish consecrated to the Heart of Jesus, a cross on a hill and a poem in his breviary all came from it. ¹⁴ The people who named him its madman were his own companions. ⁴

He was told to leave and stayed. ⁴⁵ For six months he lived hidden in one family's house, saying Mass where he could, until the morning the soldiers knocked and he opened the door. ⁴⁵

What the sources remember most is the last few minutes. He knelt, blessed his parish, forgave the men who were about to kill him and took the rope from them so that their hands would be clean of it. ⁴⁵ The sources do not explain that, and it does not need explaining.