Saint José Sánchez del Río

He was born on March 28, 1913, in Sahuayo, in the Mexican state of Michoacán. ¹⁷ He is often called by the diminutive Joselito. ⁶⁷ He grew up while the government of Plutarco Elías Calles, president from 1924, was turning the anticlerical articles of the Mexican constitution against the Church. ³⁷ The laws banned religious orders, took away the Church's right to property and stripped priests of civil rights, and Catholics could be fined or jailed for teaching the faith or holding services outside a church. ³

War broke out in 1926. ¹⁷ The Holy See's biography for his canonization says the Catholic faith was very much alive in Sahuayo and the Cristero movement deeply rooted there. ¹ Priests stayed hidden in the town through the whole persecution, celebrating Mass in secret and giving the sacraments, and the boy took part assiduously. ¹ People spoke often of the early Christian martyrs in those years, it adds, and many young people wanted to follow them. ¹

His brothers joined the rebel forces, and, in the Holy See's words, "José too was enlisted." ¹ Today's Catholic, the newspaper of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, says his family wanted him at home because of his age, and gave way only because he persisted. ⁶ The Catholic News Herald, of the Diocese of Charlotte, gives what he is said to have told his mother: "Mama, do not let me lose the opportunity to gain heaven so easily and so soon." ⁷ Catholic News Agency says he served under General Prudencio Mendoza, and Today's Catholic that he carried the flag. ⁴⁶

He was captured during a violent battle, on January 25, 1928, according to the Holy See, or on February 5, according to the Catholic News Herald. ¹⁷ He was brought back to Sahuayo and imprisoned in the parish church, which the federal troops had desecrated and laid waste; the Catholic News Herald puts him in the sacristy. ¹⁷

Someone suggested that he escape, to avoid being sentenced to death, and he refused. ¹ To make him renounce his faith, the Holy See says, his jailers tortured him and forced him to watch the hanging of "another boy who had been imprisoned with him." ¹ The Catholic News Herald describes the hanged prisoner as one of the other captured Cristeros, a man, and gives words José is said to have spoken to him: "You will be in heaven before me. Prepare a place for me. Tell Christ the King I shall be with Him soon." ⁷

His family tried to get him out. ⁵⁷ The Catholic News Herald says his father tried to raise a ransom and could not do it in time. ⁷ Father Fidel González, the postulator of his cause, told the National Catholic Register that witnesses remembered his answer to his parents: "My faith is not for sale." ⁵ While they tortured him, the postulator said, they offered to send him to study in the United States, or to admit him to the Military Academy, if he would give up his faith. ⁵

Three days before his death he wrote to his mother. ¹ The Holy See's English gives the letter's heart this way: "Trust in God's will. I die happy because I am dying next to our Lord." ¹

The soles of his feet were flayed, and he was made to walk to the cemetery. ¹³⁵ The Catholic News Herald adds that he was forced to walk on salt first, and then through the town. ⁷ Along the way, the postulator said, the soldiers told him they would spare his life if he would shout "Death to Christ the King," and instead he went on crying "Long live Christ the King" and "Long live the Lady of Guadalupe." ⁵

What happened at the grave is told in more than one way. ¹⁵ The English of the Holy See's booklet says that, standing before the grave prepared for him, he was "shot, but not mortally," and asked again to renounce the faith; the Spanish and Italian printed beside it say he was stabbed. ¹ The postulator says they kept stabbing him and finally shot him with a pistol. ⁵ The Holy See says that with every wound he cried out, "Long live Christ the King! Long live our Lady of Guadalupe!", and all three accounts end with a shot. ¹⁵⁷

It was February 10, 1928, and he was, in the Holy See's words, "nearly fifteen years old." ¹ Catholic News Agency says he was killed by the Federal Army. ³⁴

John Paul II declared him a martyr in 2004, and Benedict XVI beatified him in 2005. ¹⁵ Pope Francis signed the decree recognizing a miracle through his intercession on January 21, 2016: the recovery, in 2008, of a baby girl in Mexico whom doctors had given "no hope of survival." ⁴ Today's Catholic reports that her mother had prayed to him, "You were a child. You would understand." ⁶

Francis canonized him in St. Peter's Square on October 16, 2016, with six others. ²⁵ Speaking to Catholic News Agency that day, Cardinal Alberto Suárez Inda of Morelia called him "a great intercessor and a great example for youth." ³ Father González, a consultor to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints for thirty-one years, said he had seen hundreds of cases of martyrdom, "but never of a martyr so young." ⁵

The Catholic News Herald calls him "the patron saint of children and teenagers." ⁷ It is the only source consulted for this page that names a patronage, and the claim is reported here rather than adopted. ⁷ Cardinal Suárez Inda, speaking on the day of the canonization, offered him to the young as an example and an intercessor, which is not quite the same thing. ³

His feast is February 10, the anniversary of his death. ⁶⁷ Today's Catholic, writing in October 2016, looked ahead to February 10 as "the occasion of St. José Sánchez del Río's first feast day," and the Catholic News Herald says simply that "his feast day is Feb. 10." ⁶⁷

Pope Francis did not speak of him by name at the canonization. ² He said of all seven new saints that they "fought the good fight of faith and love by their prayers," and that this is why "they remained firm in faith, with a generous and steadfast heart." ²

He was fourteen, and the sources do not soften what was done to him. ¹⁵ His last letter told his mother to trust in God's will and said he died happy. ¹ She was the one who had to read it.

He was offered a way out more than once: escape, a ransom, a place to study abroad. ¹⁵⁷ The postulator called it a maturity far beyond his age. ⁵ It was also a boy's refusal to say, even once, the words his captors wanted to hear.

Cardinal Suárez Inda said that most Christians "don't have the grace of a bloody martyrdom," and are asked instead "to be heroic every day, in ordinary life." ³ The boy from Sahuayo is remembered for the one day that asked everything of him. ¹