VIVA CRISTO REY! That is LONG LIVE CHRIST THE KING! This was the rallying cry of the Cristeros in
the war for religious freedom in Mexico 1926-29. Those were the last words of Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro before the firing squad seconds before his body was riddled with
bullets. The day before the feast
of Christ the King this year we celebrate the feast day (November 23) of this
holy Jesuit priest. Mexico has many such
heroic saints. It has so much to be
proud of.
His life
story is fascinating. Blessed Miguel Pro was born in
Guadalupe in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico on January 13, 1891, the third of
11 children (four died in infancy) of a mining engineer and a pious and charitable
mother. Two of his sisters entered the
convent. He was a high spirited and
happy kid. Growing up among miners, he
developed a special love for the working classes.
In
his youth, Miguel contracted a life threatening brain infection. The medical prognosis was that even if he did
survive, he would be almost an imbecile.
His father, prayed to Our Lady of Guadalupe and placed her image before
him. Miraculously, he was suddenly
cured. Another time, his foot got caught
in a railroad track. As the speeding
train thundered toward him, Miguel desperately prayed to Our Lady of Guadalupe,
the patroness of Mexico and all the Americas, to spare him from purgatory. Again Mary saved his life as he barely pulled
his foot out of the shoe in the last second.
God had a special mission for Miguel that continues from heaven and his
story that inspires millions.
In
Mexico, a new constitution for the country had been signed. Five articles of
the 1917
Constitution of Mexico were particularly aimed at suppression of the Catholic Church.
Article 3 mandated secular education in schools, prohibiting the Church from
participating in primary and secondary education. Article 5 outlawed monastic religious orders.
Article 24 forbade public worship outside of church buildings, while Article 27
restricted religious organizations' rights to own property. Finally, Article
130 took away basic civil rights of members of the clergy: priests and
religious were prevented from wearing their habits, were denied the right to
vote, and were not permitted to comment on public affairs in the press. Most of
the anti-clerical provisions of the constitution were removed in 1998.
In
1911 at the age of 20 he entered the Jesuit Novitiate. Since it is the most intellectual order of
the Church, he underwent years of intense study. Because of the Mexican Revolution,
anti-clericalism, and intense persecution, he and the other Jesuits fled to Los
Gatos, California, where he spent the rest of his novitiate. His major studies were in Granada, Spain
1915-1919. Then he taught in Nicaragua
1919-1922), and finished his theological studies in Enghien, Belgium, where he
was finally ordained in 1925. His first
assignment as a priest was to work with the miners of Charleroi, Belgium. Despite
the socialist and communist tendencies of the
workers, he was able to win them over and preach the Gospel to them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Pro
).
After
three unsuccessful operations for severe stomach ulcers, his superiors allowed
him to return to Mexico in 1926 in spite of religious persecution. The churches were closed and priests were in
hiding. During the 1920s, Mexico was ruled by the virulently anti-Catholic
President Plutarco Calles, who began what Graham Greene called “the fiercest
persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth”. During the month of October 1927, 300 Catholics
were executed for publicly professing their faith. Calles once openly boasted: “I have a
personal hatred for Christ”. In 1921, a
terrorist placed a bomb mixed with flowers before the venerable image of Our
Lady of Guadalupe. Every window in the
basilica was broken, an image of St. James was destroyed, and a bronze cross
was bent out of shape. But nothing
happened either to the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe nor the glass covering. Among the many Catholic groups who most
vigorously opposed the oppressive Calles regime were the Cristeros. Padre
Miguel and two of his brothers were involved in the Cristero Movement in
opposition.
Blessed
Miguel clandestinely under different disguises heroically ministered to the
people.......assisting the poor of Mexico
City with their temporal and spiritual needs. He constantly outwitted the police……once even
dressed as a policeman to escape and scolded the other police for not being
able to catch this priest Pro.
 |
In his own words, "Imagine fifty
noisy chauffeurs, their Tejano (Texan) cap and a lock of hair over the eye and
spitting prodigiously. Fine types with their rough, unpolished manners..."
(In Spanish, he called them people of "pro" which means "quality
or goodness.") He continued, "Needless to stress the solemnity of the
conferences in a spacious yard, surrounded with an iron grating. Disguised as a
mechanic, my cap pulled over my forehead, I elbow my sympathetic
congregation... (he had to keep them moving around, in his words, "like
cattle", so people passing by wouldn't realize it was a religious
conference where he was preaching). God bless every chauffeur in the world!" This is taken from Ann Ball's book
above. You can obtain it from her web
site at (http://annball.com/books/miguel.shtml)
The Message of
Father Pro
"We ought to speak, shout out
against injustices, with confidence and without fear. We proclaim the
principles of the Church, the reign of love, without forgetting that it is also
a reign of justice." - Miguel Agustin Pro, S.J.
A Prayer of
Father Pro
"Does our life become from day to day
more painful, more oppressive, more replete with afflictions? Blessed be He a
thousand times who desires it so. If life be harder, love makes it also
stronger, and only this love, grounded on suffering, can carry the Cross of my
Lord Jesus Christ. Love without egotism, without relying on self, but
enkindling in the depth of the heart an ardent thirst to love and suffer for
all those around us: a thirst that neither misfortune nor contempt can
extinguish... I believe, O Lord; but strengthen my faith... Heart of Jesus, I
love Thee; but increase my love. Heart of Jesus, I trust in Thee; but give
greater vigor to my confidence. Heart of Jesus, I give my heart to Thee; but so
enclose it in Thee that it may never be separated from Thee. Heart of Jesus, I
am all Thine; but take care of my promise so that I may be able to put it in
practice even unto the complete sacrifice of my life.
 |
Falsely accused of being part of a
plot to assassinate the tyrannical former Mexican President Álvaro
Obregón during his election campaign, Fr. Pro and his brother Humberto were wanted men and became fugitives in hiding. Betrayed to police, they were sentenced to
death without any legal process. With
that as a pretext, the Calles regime rounded up a number of others for a mass execution. Above is a mug shot of Blessed Padre Miguel
Pro made by the police on the day of the execution. Notice his heroic serenity, certainly a
reflection of his tremendous faith.
The
Government called the Press to cover the execution of the “plotters” to
intimate other Cristeros as well as the people in general and show Catholics,
particularly priests as a cowardly people who would give up their faith when
faced with death. Among the many photos
of the execution on November 23, 1927 are the following:
 |  | ||
One soldier apologized while taking
Padre Pro from the jail to the execution site.
When the Major in charge asked Blessed Miguel Padre Pro
whether he wanted to express a last will.
He only asked for permission to pray which was granted (above left
photo). He blessed and forgave his
executioners, even thanking them (for the privilege of being a martyr for
Christ). Then the saintly Jesuit priest said: "May God have mercy
on you. May God bless you." He briskly walked to
the stake and bravely refused to be blind folded. Standing erect with a crucifix in one hand
and a rosary in the other, the future saint raised his arms in a cruciform in
an imitation of Christ (above right), the position of our Lord and King's
passion and death on the cross. Just
after the command “Ready, aim”, the valiant priest cried out: “Viva Cristo
Rey!”.......”Long live Christ the King”.
A split second later his body was riddled with bullets.
 |  | ||
The first shots of the firing squad
may have failed to kill Padre Pro. To
make sure a 20th Century centurion is shown on the right shooting
him point blank in the head. The father
of the two executed brothers found the corpses of his sons in the hospital and
tenderly kissed each one. He comforted
his daughter: “There is nothing to weep
over, my child.” How true regarding a
saint in Heaven, who never had to make the stopover in purgatory. Blessed Miguel's childhood prayer was
answered.
The
strategy of making this a show execution backfired. On the following day, thirty
thousand people bravely flocked to
the funeral and its procession (See photo below). As they silently drove along,
flowers were strewn before the martyrs’ path and dropped down from hundreds of
balconies. Then the chanting started. Before long, thousands were picking it
up. And the thundering roar that shook the capital city on the day that the
beloved Padre Pro was buried, was soon echoing all over Mexico: "Long live
the martyrs! Long live the Mexican clergy! Long live the Catholic religion! Long
live our bishops and priests! Long live the Pope! Lord, if You want martyrs,
here is our blood!" (Taken from www.thesacredheart.com/sts/pro.htm)
 |  | ||
The photos gave such eloquent testimony of his faith and courage that the regime forbade even the very possession of one of these photos. Pictures on newspapers all over Mexico and the world embolden the Cristeros to continue on. Eventually, the persecution decreased. However, there still were anti-clerical and anti-Catholic laws on the books that were gradually overlooked and in 1998 most were repealed. As far as I know, priests and nuns cannot wear habits or clerical garb. Private Catholic schools are still not permitted and the freedom of the Church to exercise its mission is limited.
Blessed Padre Miguel Pro became a
martyr and hero among the people.
Although better known in the United States than Mexico, the young Jesuit
priest became a national and international hero. On September 25, 1988, Padre Miguel was
beatified by Pope John Paul II, who then said:
“Neither suffering nor serious
illness, neither the exhausting ministerial activity, frequently carried out in
difficult and dangerous circumstances, could stifle the radiating and
contagious joy which he brought to his life for Christ and which nothing could
take away. Indeed, the deepest root of self-sacrificing surrender for the lowly
was his passionate love for Jesus Christ and his ardent desire to be conformed
to him, even unto death.”[8]
Eventually he will be a canonized
saint of the Catholic Church. Relics of
Blessed Miguel Pro can be found in the Mary chapel of St.
Raphael the Archangel Catholic Church in Raleigh, North
Carolina. More information about the life of
Blessed Miguel Pro can be found at:
For an eloquent homily by Bishop
Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix on Blessed Miguel Pro, go to
The persecutions in Mexico (1920s),
Spain (1930s), Nazism, Communism, radical Islamic Militancy, and Secularism are
all part of a common struggle as prophetically noted by a Cardinal Karol
Wojtyla in 1976, two years before becoming Pope:
“We
are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity
has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or
wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing
the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel
and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine
providence. It is a trial which the whole Church… must take up.” (Karol Cardinal Wojtyla Sept. 1976)
The gates of hell did not prevail; today
the persecutors are dead, but the Church lives.
Christ and His mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe are there. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church.
The Humor and Humanity
of Blessed Miguel Pro
December 23rd, 2011 | Author: NJN Editor
“A joyful heart is a good medicine,” reads Proverbs, and
Blessed Miguel Pro would know. For years, the Jesuit martyr grappled with
debilitating stomach problems that not even a series of surgeries could remedy.
And during his convalescence in December 1925, he celebrated Christmas with
Jesuit Father John J. Druhan, then a New Orleans Province scholastic, in a
Belgian hospital. Pro was just 34 years old at the time, Druhan 32.
The two Jesuits, having met the previous year in the Belgian
house of studies, had an easy rapport, and Fr. Druhan wrote that “…Pro’s quips
and pranks and infectious good humor spoke all languages with equal fluency.”
Pro spoke American slang in his Mexican accent, Druhan said, and he liked to
sing popular songs, particularly “random bars of a song which was quite popular
during the war and in which a doughboy pledged a tryst with a certain Katherine
while the moon was shining over the cowshed.”
Though their Christmas celebration was hampered by illness,
Druhan and the newly ordained young Jesuit entertained themselves with a
camera; Druhan captured a pensive Pro reading a commentary on Pope Leo XIII’s
encyclical Rerum Novarum. “The exposure was so long that the subject confessed
he nearly ruptured his inner sutures,” Druhan wrote, “A month later the
developed picture and print proved that the foolhardy virtue of amateur
photographers sometimes brings its own reward.”
The invaluable discoveries of this rare photograph of Pro
and Druhan’s account of their time together are credited to Joan Gaulene,
volunteer for the New Orleans Province Archive at Loyola University New
Orleans.
“I picked up a negative in Druhan’s box and put it aside
thinking it was him, but the last item in his box was this writing about his
time with Miguel Pro,” she recounts. Druhan’s reflection, Side Lights on Father
Miguel Pro, S.J., is five pages in length, typed with proof marks and signed by
its author. It reveals their storytelling and the “tricks and jokes” by which
Pro entertained and eventually convinced the sisters of the hospital that he
was “well enough to resume the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice.”
Realizing the subject of the negative was Blessed Miguel
Pro, Gaulene contacted the province archivist, Jesuit Father William Huete, who
says of these newfound treasures, “Druhan’s account shows us Pro was a modern
person. He was disarming.” It was because of this, Gaulene adds, that “he was
able to pull off all sorts of things.”
Miguel Pro’s mischievous character and funny bone were among
his greatest gifts – gifts that enabled his ministry in Mexico even when it was
outlawed. As a scholastic, he was forced out of his homeland during
government-imposed religious suppression, returning 12 years later as a priest
during the Cristiada, the rebellion of Catholics against Mexican President
Plutarco Elias Calles. The Cristiada escalated to such dangerous heights that
priests were exiled and Catholic bishops elected to halt public worship in
Mexico, a decision approved by Pope Pius XI, who himself condemned, in two
encyclicals, the Mexican government’s persecution and murder of Catholics.
Through all this, Pro considered his re-admittance into the
country a miracle. No one examined his passport or searched his bags. Upon
arrival inMexico City, he realized that Catholics were starved for communion,
leading him to create “Eucharistic Stations” throughout the city where he
distributed daily communion to as many as 300 people and on First Fridays to
well over 1,000 faithful souls.
He administered the sacraments in secrecy and in disguise,
donning the clothes of a cab driver or a mechanic to share the Spiritual
Exercises or to perform baptisms and wearing a business suit to solicit
donations from wealthy Catholics or to celebrate marriages. Under the long nose
of local government, he impersonated a prison guard to hear confessions and
pray with prisoners. He was always on the move, and though he received messages
and donations in a variety of locations, the police were never far behind.
Pro’s own writing tells of an occasion when police entered a
private home as he celebrated Mass; after rushing everyone into other rooms of
the house, he hid the Blessed Sacrament in his suit pocket. He accompanied
police on their search for a priest and when none was found, a guard was posted
at the door of the residence. Upon his exit, a jovial Pro informed the guard
that he would have remained behind to catch the priest were it not for a date
with his girlfriend. Jesting about the near snare, he later wrote, “…I returned
to the place, but, somehow or other, the priest had not yet appeared…”
On another occasion, Pro approached a house to celebrate
Mass but was met by two policemen standing guard at its entrance. “It’s all up
this time,” he wrote in recollection of the confrontation. He knew entering the
house was dangerous, but he would not submit to fear. “With as much coolness as
I could summon up,” he wrote, “I advanced until I stood in front
of the policemen, took down the number of the house, opened
my vest as if I were showing them a badge, and said significantly, ‘There’s a
cat bagged here,’” insinuating that he was on the case of busting up the Mass.
His clever ruse earned a military salute from the policemen and entrance into
the guarded house. Once inside, he tried to ease the fears of his Mass
participants, informing them that, “We couldn’t be any safer than we are now,
for the police themselves are guarding the door for us.” It did not relieve
their fears, and they urged him to leave. “I left by the way I entered,” he
wrote, but “not without receiving two magnificent military salutes from the
police.”
They caught him on several occasions, however, and Pro was
imprisoned for short stints which had the unintended consequence of greatly
aiding his prison ministry. By his own account he witnessed the conversion of
many hearts, which inspired him to continue his work despite great peril, and
he pressed on to promote the faith. As “chief of the lecturers” for the
Catholic Association of Mexican Youth, Pro organized over 100 men to give
religious instruction in the absence of the many exiled priests and to help
combat anti-Catholic sentiment. His brother Humberto Pro was a member of the
group, as was Louis Segura Vilchis, an engineer who was among the association’s
best speakers. “The first to suffer will be those who have put their hands into
the religious question, and I have put mine in up to the elbows,” Pro wrote.
“God grant that I may be among the first, or, for that matter, among the last;
but at least one of the number. If that happens, get ready to make your
petitions to me in Heaven.”
The three men were arrested on November 17, 1927, and
charged with the attempted assassination of former president General Álvaro
Obregón, who days earlier was injured when a bomb was tossed into his vehicle.
The attempt was linked to a car formerly owned by the Pros. Obregón himself
suspected someone else in the assassination attempt, and at his request an
appeal was made to the chief of police to begin the judicial process
immediately. He was assured by the chief’s secretary that a trial would be held
the following day.
The next morning in the courtyard of police headquarters,
however, a firing squad awaited the Pro brothers and Vilchis. The deception was
carefully orchestrated at the request of President Calles who had made the
execution request to the chief of police six months prior. Professional
photographers were on hand to document the executions. No time was spared for
the men to see their families, and Fr. Miguel Pro was summoned first. He
forgave and blessed his prison guard and once in the courtyard, he knelt for a
brief prayer and blessed his executioners. Without a blindfold and with a
crucifix in one hand and his rosary in the other, he outstretched his arms and
exclaimed, “Viva Cristo Rey!” (Long Live Christ the King!) He was 36 years old.
The same fate awaited Pro’s brother Humberto and their
brother in Christ Louis Segura Vilchis. Later, at the vigil held in the Pro
home, countless people paid respects to their courageous friends. The following
afternoon, thousands flooded the streets in anticipation of Pro’s funeral, and
when the remains of the Pro brothers were carried out of their father’s house
to DeloresCemetery, it was to tremendous shouts of “Viva Cristo Rey!”
Shortly after Pro’s death, relics were reported to have
worked miracles, and his intercession has been credited with curing terminal
illnesses and conquering
addictions. But his ministry itself was a miracle – a single
year of priestly ministry that encouraged countless Mexican Catholics to persevere
in their faith.
Fr. Pro’s ministry and martyrdom occurred at the height of
the Cristiada, and the effects of Calles’ ruthless pursuit of Catholics were
devastating to the Church. It is estimated that as many as 4,000 priests were
exiled or killed during his term. And after a so-called truce with countrymen,
the Calles regime is alleged to have executed thousands more for their defense
and practice of the faith.
Fr. Miguel Pro was beatified on September 25, 1988, by Pope
John Paul II who said, “Neither suffering nor serious illness, neither the
exhausting ministerial activity, frequently carried out in difficult and
dangerous circumstances, could stifle the radiating and contagious joy which he
brought to his life for Christ and which nothing could take away. Indeed, the
deepest root of self-sacrificing surrender for the lowly was his passionate
love for Jesus Christ and his ardent desire to be conformed to him, even unto
death.”
Blessed Miguel Pro is most remembered as a martyr, but his
inspiring life was that of an amiable man for others, a Jesuit confirmed in his
vocation, armed only with his gift of humor and a courageous heart. Ending his
reflection on Fr. Pro’s admirable life and death, Fr. Druhan penned, “And if in
the course of this article undue stress appears to have been placed on the
purely human and natural traits of the man and the priest, it is because we
have wished to show that a heroic life is not infrequently hidden behind a
smiling countenance.”
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