Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro
Priest and Martyr
- Feast Day
- November 23
- Life
- 1891–1927
- Order
- Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
- Born
- Guadalupe, Zacatecas, Mexico
Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez was born on January 13, 1891, in the mining town of Guadalupe, Zacatecas, the third of eleven children in a devout Catholic family. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1911. The Mexican Revolution and the anti-clerical Constitution of 1917 forced the Jesuits into exile; Miguel completed his studies in California, Spain, Nicaragua, and Belgium, where he was ordained priest at Enghien on August 31, 1925.
He returned to Mexico in July 1926 just as President Plutarco Elias Calles enforced the so-called Calles Law that effectively suppressed public Catholic worship and triggered the Cristero War. With public ministry forbidden, Father Pro went underground: he celebrated Mass in private homes, heard confessions, distributed the Eucharist clandestinely (often in disguise as a mechanic, student, or police officer), and organized food relief for the poor of Mexico City. Falsely implicated in a failed assassination attempt on the former president Alvaro Obregon, he was arrested with his brothers Humberto and Roberto on November 18, 1927. Without trial, he was executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the Mexico City police station on November 23, 1927. Eyewitnesses recorded that he refused a blindfold, knelt, prayed for his executioners, then stood with his arms outstretched in the form of a cross and cried Viva Cristo Rey - Long live Christ the King. Pope Saint John Paul II beatified him on September 25, 1988.
Blessed Miguel Pro is a patron of priests in persecution and a martyr of the kingship of Christ proclaimed in Quas Primas only two years before his death. His final cry has become the motto of the Cristero martyrs and of Catholics under any regime that demands what belongs to God alone.
From Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro
"Viva Cristo Rey!"
Sources