LIFE OF THE CONGREGATION
Evaristo Martínez de Alegría, scj
without knowing the history of the past”
* * * * *
Keeping the Memory Alive
Among the many Jubilee events of the year 2000, one which was truly significant, not only for the place which was chosen - the Colosseum in Rome, which traditionally evokes the memory of those multitudinous martyrs who bore witness to their faith during the first centuries - but, above all, for the ecumenical recollection of the many Christians of the whole world who, around the 20th century, have been witnesses of the faith and of its consequences, in the face of all classes of power. Generally the people in power during these events have desired to classify their persecution and violence as a response to those who have been disobedient to the constituted authorities and regimes. On many occasions these people in power were themselves, theoretically, either Christians or of a Christian culture; making it so that, in some cases, Christians have been exterminated by other Christians.
Ecclesiastical Commitment
Andrea Riccardi has written a solid and well documented volume entitled “Il Secolo del Martirio” (The Century of Martyrdom), (I don’t know if this has been translated into any other languages). This book, based on those memories which people have sent as a result of the call of the Pope, has been read with interest on the part of the older generation, since everything which is indicated in it is known to us, sometimes with specific names and places. The Pope issued this call on the occasion of the preparation for the Jubilee and directed it to all the different local Churches. I think that the younger people also find this book provocative; for them it is like a call from a living and witnessing Church. This is the kind of Church which is needed today, because it looks as if the Church has forgotten this theme and is more preoccupied by current problems: discussions on its structure, or the future itself. This fact was already indicated in 1966 when the theme of martyrdom, as part of a Christianity much questioned because of its opening to the world, was re-proposed by the then emergent theologian Von Baltasar. The “martyr” does not always meet immediate publicity.
Sometimes a generation has to pass before the martyr’s figure emerges. This is probably what is happening with regard to our people in Africa, and to many others whom the media has put in the limelight for a while, because they are of news value, only to have them subsequently disappear. This is what has happened in Africa (around the area of the Great Lakes in particular) and in Latin America. We are also especially aware of this happening in recent years: in Yugoslavia, where there is an ethnic and religious strife without quarter, and also, because of the merciless war which Islamic fundamentalism has been fighting on various fronts, previously in Argelia or East Timor and now in the Molucas.
During this month of December there have been several volumes published regarding “Witnesses to the Faith”. They are based on the testimonies which have been collected as a result of the Pope’s call on the occasion of that joyous celebration of the Great Jubilee. This is how we are making a new Martyrology for the XXI century.
Between Ourselves
As I was writing these lines the excellent Fr. Savino Palermo - who has studied the Church of the Congo, and in particular our mission in those lands, in his voluminous work: “Pour l’amour de mon peuple” (For Love of My People), a collection of documentations, testimonials and letters which today surprise and move even the indigenous priests and religious who wish to encounter the roots of their Christian identity - told me that many years ago, when the apostolic nuncio to the Congo wanted to introduce the cause of all the martyrs concerned with the tragic date of 1964, one of our Provincials, through his secretary, asked why it was so important to get involved in this information... that it was better to leave things as they were. Every reader can imagine the reasons for this lack of commitment and unexpected response before this ecclesiastical fact which so moved the Congregation and the Church itself. And the blessed Anuarite Nengapeta is a prominent witness of that massacre; she was the spiritual daughter of Msgr. Wittebols, who was assassinated along with many other religious, priests and lay people: those who bore that magnificent witness which must be collected, put in order, and kept, before the passing of years obscures what was written about them at the time in magazines, or before various political attitudes distort the very facts of their sacrifice which was, for many of them, a gift of their lives for the nascent Congolese Church.
In the Year of Our Lord 2000
John Paul II, in planning the objectives for the Church during the Jubilee, took great account of this illustrious period of which the Church has passed through during these recent years, when he said in Tertio millennio adveniente: “At the end of the second millennium, the Church has once again become a Church of martyrs. The persecutions of believers &emdash; priests, Religious and laity &emdash; has caused a great sowing of martyrdom in different parts of the world. The witness to Christ borne even to the shedding of blood has become a common inheritance of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants, as Pope Paul VI pointed out in his Homily for the Canonization of the Ugandan Martyrs. This witness must not be forgotten. The Church of the first centuries, although facing considerable organizational difficulties, took care to write down in special martyrologies the witness of the martyrs... In our own century the martyrs have returned, many of them nameless, becoming the “unknown soldiers” of God’s great cause. As far as possible, their witness should not be lost to the Church” (37).
A Memory from Among Our Own
The reason why the figure of the soon to be beatified member of the Congregation, Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz, has not been lost is because, in Spain, especially in the places where he did his pastoral and apostolic work, people always recalled him in such a way that he developed a fame of sanctity. This soon moved the Spanish Province to take the first steps towards the Process for the Cause of Beatification in 1954. This was put into movement by means of the then Postulator General, Fr. Ceresoli. He is the one who, in 1959, took the first steps to start this Process in Valencia - the diocese in which Fr. Juan was murdered on August 23, 1936. He continued until the Process was stopped, because of the fact that this kind of Cause for the “martyrs of the Spanish war” was suspended by Paul VI in 1964, in view of the fact that at that time, in Spain, it was not suitable either from the political or the religious point of view. It was started again later, under John Paul II: a situation arose, to which the Cause of Fr. Juan was also added; it has passed to a Cause of beatification as a martyr, as was promoted by Fr. Giuseppe Girardi, and will conclude in this Jubilee Year. On March 11, 2001 he will be beatified with his 234 fellow martyrs of Valencia. This is an event which, for those who were involved with the Process for his Cause, will be of great importance in the local Church. It is a moment which unites those priests, religious and lay people who, in the environment of that diocese, bore witness to their faith.
There are many of our religious who should be given a concrete, historical memory. We must think especially of those others who fell, because of the Nazi persecution which was equally severe in Italy, with Fr. Martino Capelli (The Process for the Cause of his Beatification is in the diocesan phase). We must also remember the people in Germany who were persecuted by Nazi “justice”, as were the fifteen people indicated by P. B. Bothe in the magazine Nova et Vetera No. 287 - 2000. They were condemned to jail, to forced labor, they lost their civil rights, etc. We can imagine that something similar also occurred in other places, especially in Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland (an let us not forget Indonesia), and those of whom I have only heard mentioned, but have no concrete dates regarding persons and sentences.
Martyrs and Witnesses
A subject which waits for a deeper study, and perhaps a wider temporal space in order to have a more objective view, is that of our “martyrs” of the Republic of the Congo. This should be done in view of the way similar situations are progressing in other countries, like Spain or Mexico, and because of the doctrines available which refer to martyrdom, at a time when nobody wanted to call these people martyrs. Basically, they were subjected to persecution, not so much for the faith, as such, but for the consequences of their faith. Being Christian, they felt obliged or moved to take part in explicit or habitual actions when faced with the power or dictatorial regimes of both the left and the right. Their behavior was the same regarding economic interests of all kinds, knowing that these surreptitiously make the life of priests, religious and catechists so impossible that it leads to their death. These are the very people who rise in defense of the weakest, of the peasants and indigenous, and of basic civil liberties: as happened especially in Latin America.
Pierro Longo, a well known Italian missionary, is one of those who died in the Congo in 1964, and whose memory is well preserved through the diocesan Process: Rome is already studying his Cause. Who can say whether, in years to come and when there is less social, political, and even ecclesiastical, internal and external reticence, there may not be a cause for the martyrdom of all those of our brethren, religious, etc., from the dioceses of Kisangani and Wamba, who fell in the social-political, and even religious, confusion resulting from the backlash of the de-colonization timetable?
It is a call and a challenge to collect, in a dossier, everything referring to each and every one of them (we imagine that there must exist copious information in Dutch and Flemish, which it would be very important to translate, hopefully by those of our retired brethren who feel inspired by this work, so that we can have it when the right moment comes). But, even though it would be possible to come up with a simpler way to put forth the Cause of martyrdom if we really tried, it would all the same be just as important simply because it is a way to know how these people lived before. Sometimes, as is the case with Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz, daily life is a humble, uncomplaining, and mysterious preparation. It is what will help us to discover those values which, in the midst of so much apparent hullabaloo, above all emphasize the fact that it is their faith and love for their people which has moved so many missionaries to share the violence and sufferings, even death itself, with the people of God - in spite of the social, political fog which certain people would like to use in order to distort the actions or style of life of these holy people. Eloquent witnesses attest to this, such as the well known Msgr. Wittebols and Pierre Longo. One need not look very far because: “Greater love hath no man that he lay down his life for his brethren”... This belief is the key to understanding the human senselessness of those deaths and of many others all through the XX century, and to understanding the reason why the Church, especially local Churches, must conserve their memory, not only in documentation but in the way they live the life of their own communities.
It is the witness of the primitive Church around the tomb of its martyrs - starting from the “memoria Petri” in Rome, united with those other richer tombs, generally of freedmen, which lined the Roman road, alongside Nero’s circus, leading to the Aurelia - that lets us know how these people kept the faithful memory of Peter, witness, father and pastor of the Roman community.
Witness During the Spanish Civil War
Riccardi, in the introduction to his above mentioned work, points out something which can also be affirmed concerning the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War: “it is like a fresco which presents humble, non violent people who are persecuted and who suffer death because they are Christian. It is undeniably a world of the weak and the defeated. The story of their assassinations or murders is that of their weakness and their defeat. However it is precisely in these conditions of extreme weakness that these Christians manifested a personal strength of spiritual and moral character. They did not renounce their faith, their own convictions, their service to the others or to the Church in order to save their own life and, in short, insure their own survival. This is a reality of the history of Christianity”.
A Glance at the Reality of Those Years
In order to understand the figure and the martyrdom of Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz, it is fundamentally important to sketch in something about the religious-social-political and economic reality of Spain in those years of the XX century. It was a time in which the cries for “Two Spains” were going to end up giving the world a bloody and fratricidal call to attention. There would be a civil war in which practically all countries became involved. It was an anticipation of the Second World War, and for some it was a testing ground (nazism, fascism and communism). For others it was a fight for democracy, as it was understood by the partisans of the government of the Popular Front, or liberals. When considering the world of the workers and peasants throughout all of Europe, one must always take into account the forces of socialism, of anarchy and, emerging from the III International, of a communism directed and controlled by Soviet Russia.
The means of communication made it so that nobody in the world could remain unaware of what was happening. There was an incipient globalization of news and it presented the horror of that tragedy in magazines, papers, cinema and radio. The consequence of all this was an increase of extremist support and exploitation.
The Road to the Two Spains
The number of people who suffered that living tragedy for the Church in “Catholic” Spain is surprising and frightful. The data which we are presenting come from a doctoral thesis later turned into a book: “Historia de la persecución religiosa en España (The History of Religious Persecution in Spain) 1936-1939” by A. Montero Moreno. It may have slight discrepancies, since it was written in 1960, but they are of little account when revealing the magnitude of the murders: of the 6,832 killed, 4,184 belonged to the secular clergy, including 12 bishops, an apostolic administrator and seminarians: 2,365 were male religious and 283 were female religious. With regard to the number of secular people killed, for being Christians and for other religious motives, it is not possible to give even an approximate figure because there are no reliable statistics. However, there must have been several thousand from all social conditions, even gypsies - of whom one, who was the first of this group of people who are so marginalized, has been already beatified.
The general uneasiness, the social and political restlessness, the religious situation, all find their roots in the more recent history of the XIX century, from the time of the disillusion of the colonial empire, from the time when people remembered a Spain which at one time counted for something in Europe and in America. On the spiritual level, the Spaniard of that time - having very little to offer compared to England, France and Germany, or, indeed, to the United States, whose people they had encountered in Latin America and in the Philippines - was situated between the sensation of collapse and of “trying anything” and the feeling of “starting afresh” and of there being a regeneration on all fronts; one which, surprisingly enough, from the literary, artistic and philosophical point of view, was to produce excellent fruit.
In the social and economic field, they were living a situation which was practically colonial with regard to Europe - which, through the Bank, controlled the exportation of raw agricultural and mineral materials, as well as the slow industrialization of the country, with the participation of Spanish capital, leaving it to those who had a scarce business capacity, and finding it was less of a risk than they had thought.
Only the First World War was to permit a period of economic improvement, since they were a neutral country and could sell to all sides. The crisis of 1929 also had its economic and social repercussions in the country. Happening shortly before the proclamation of the Republic, on April 14, 1931, it worsened the general situation.
What became more visible was the confrontation of situations of the Ancient Regime, still present in social life, and the growing awareness, on the part of the masses of workers and peasants, of their social and political rights. These events led to a radicalism based on the two great currents of socialism and anarchy. They confronted the power of the money of a liberal bourgeoisie, those who exploited the developing industrialization which was dependent to a great extent on foreign money. There was also the formation of workers’ groups which, in union with the peasants in the greater part of Spain (a rural country with a high degree of illiteracy), began to proclaim their social demands, for a life of greater justice and dignity, with periodic shows of violence until the final explosion of the powder keg in 1936.
The weight of the army, looming large in its authority, was to be a constant in these years. This was especially true in what was known as the “War of Africa”, taking place in that so-called Protectorate (an area north of today’s Morocco) which was recognized as a zone of colonial expansion by the European powers. It was a war not desired by the people - those who provided the soldiers - and it was to provoke, along with other revolts, the so-called “Tragic Week” (1909) in Barcelona. This event would be a foretaste, one might say, of what was to happen in the same city years later. It was an inefficient and bloody action in the defense of the economic interest and the authority of the great families and businesses: this is how the soldier who had been called to arms and the people felt about it. When peace finally came, a large number of officers called “Africans” began to appear. They were the disciplined Spanish troops who, during the Civil War, were to support the cause of General Franco - an efficient and much decorated Africanist military man.
In 1934, at the order of the Government, Franco violently repressed the revolution in Asturias, a socially tense mining area. It was a revolution which had as one of its objectives, fighting against the presence of the clergy and the Church, and doing so with atrocities which became legend in subsequent years. These events were a warning of what could happen to many people and prepared a widespread attitude towards martyrdom in many ecclesiastical sectors.
Army, Bank and Church were to be the predestined objectives to be destroyed after the social struggle; these thoughts were spurred by trade unionists and Marxist or anarchist inspired parties. Since there had never been an agrarian reform, and the extensive estates had never been shared out, great areas of the peninsula were in the hands of the nobility or the high bourgeoisie. The result of this was that the peasant worker was badly compensated and irregularly employed; a situation which was paid for, especially by the anarchists, by all kinds of violence and abuse - based on the lack of social sensibility on both sides. And, on the other hand, in other regions, as it might be in Castile or in the north of Spain, the small land holdings did not offer much space to a traditional agriculture. The peasants suffered because of scarce harvests and extreme climates. This was the case in the area and the village where our Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz was born and lived, in dignified poverty, in a peasant family with many children, much virtue, and little money: always with the uncertainties of weather, planting, scant harvests and the markets held in the surroundings of Ávila.
A Disordered Church
The Church in Spain carries the burden of a tradition of strength, prestige and social preeminence. This would weigh on it like a millstone, from the intellectual aspect, when the moment came to cross the threshold into modernity: the seminaries were mostly classical, being within the reform of Leo XIII, and the training normally received was not giving answers to a world which was shaping itself intellectually, socially, economically and religiously. In general good and pius priests came out of the seminaries, some of them well trained in the neo-scholasticism in use and with a ritualistic and conservative mentality. They were capable of sharing with their parishioners a life of obscure poverty and of religious traditions which, in the practice of daily living, opened a door to hope and to being good people, while avoiding any confrontation. It was not an education which would help one in taking the lead regarding those social questions it was so necessary to answer. There was, however, no lack of excellent people who promoted cooperatives, associations, unions, etc. There were many who followed the call of the Rerum Novarum, which, also in Spain, made itself felt among part of the clergy and secular people: they echoed its sentiments without coming themselves to the point of a true social change. In spite of the fact that considerable work was done in this socio-economic sector, the change that was needed continued to be one which would be in line with the rights of the workers and the peasants.
It was a poor clergy, made up mostly of peasant families or lower bourgeoisie who, living on the small subsidy they received from the State, was as poor and needy as the others living in the world of the workers. Its relationship with the high spheres of power, with the nobility on the part of some, and with the bourgeoisie, or the landless of the villages, made it so that the traditional anti-clerical animosity towards the Church, incited by the leaders of parties and trade unions, turned them into the cause or agents of all the ills of Spanish society. They spread the opium of religion which, according to classical Marxists, had put to sleep and impeded the establishment of a more fraternal, equalitarian society, in solidarity and open to modernity, as was happening in Europe.
All this is summed up by Vincent Cárcel Orti, in the presentation he made of the problem in Positio super martyrio (common in various Causes), when he wrote on ‘The Religious Persecution in Spain and Valencia’: “The two great accusations hurled against the Church - massive economic power and scant social sense - penetrated in the awareness of the popular masses and was instigated by blind and violent anti-clericalism.
In 1931 (when the Republic was proclaimed), ideological confrontations had not stopped and a large number of priests and religious became impregnated by the religious, socio-political intransigence which, over many decades, was disseminated by El Siglo Futuro (The Future Century). Read in almost all parishes, seminaries and monasteries, this daily paper, directed in its time of greatest splendor by Nocedal, the greatest exponent of Spanish integrality, provoked serious intra-ecclesiastical problems.
“To these two accusations thrown against the Church by the anti-clerical people, and also by politicians, both moderate and of the right, one must reply that in 1931 they were partly exaggerated and partly a pretext. The wealth of the Church lay in the artistic treasures of its temples and in its documentary patrimony conserved in diocesan and parish archives, in monasteries and convents, however the clergy lived in poverty”.
The anticlerical intellectuals had already been establishing an entire campaign to go against the teaching of the Church, as well as its presence in so many sectors of civil life.
The anti-clericalism of the people, even before the great explosion of 1936, had given many signs of how the Church would be treated in the coming future. The Church lived through a time in which the disasters of burning churches and convents, the murder of priests and religious, in the days of the proclamation of the Republic and the revolution of Asturias in 1934, were to be a fatal presage. Anticlerical feelings increased greatly after the elections of February 1936. The victory went to Popular Front, which, with its excesses and partiality, left the streets open to the most radical groups of both left and right. This situation produced insecurity, violence and murders: those of Castillo and of the deputy Calvo Sotelo lit the fuse of a bomb which had been long prepared; it was July 18, 1936. And, what at first appeared as just one of the many military pronouncements made “in the name of the Republic”, soon appeared to have acquired, for some, the character of “crusade”; for others, that of safeguarding “Republican legality”. The consequences of this condition was a civil war: one of the sides considered the Church as an institution and felt that all the members of the Church were guilty people and had to be eliminated.
When the Spanish Bishops wrote their famous Collective Pastoral, in July of 1937, the number of clergy sacrifices was approaching 6,500. Vicente Orti tells us: “Therefore, it can be affirmed that 6,500 martyrs - not in three years but in less than one, with a Spain divided into two unequal parts and the prospect of the continuation of a war which was already long - had to arouse in the bishops the fear of the total annihilation of the Church in a Spain which they already considered as being red. One should not underestimate the impact on world public opinion from that time until the end of the war, 21 months later. During that time only three hundred and 32 more victims were sacrificed, most of them in 1937: it was a significant “reduction”. This was the situation which provoked the pastoral letter and became the catalyst to draw the bishops nearer to one of the sides of the conflict, not the opposite, as many have thought and written. In fact, this was the situation of which, later, national Catholicism was to be the consequence.
G. Jackson, in his work La República española y la Guerra civil (The Spanish Republic and the Civil War) 1931 - 1939, was to write: “The first three months was the period of greatest terror in the republican zone. The republican passions were at their zenith and the authority of the government at its nadir... The priests... were the main victims of pure gangsterism”.
Y. H. Thomas, in La Guerra Civil española (The Spanish Civil War) adds: “Possibly in no epoch of the history of Europe, and possibly of the world, was there such a passionate manifestation against religion and what was found to be related to it”.
Two precise texts by historians from outside the conflict, but both excellent authorities on Spain. It is also interesting to re-read some statements which appeared in the newspaper Solidaridad Obrera (Workers in Solidarity), in the issue of August 15, 1936, collected also by Don Vicente Orti for the Positio super martirio: “These people must be extirpated, the Church has to be eradicated from our soil. When you are dealing with priests there should be no pity or prisoners. Kill them all without quarter. You already know that we have been ordered to kill all those who wear the cassock. We have orders to kill all the bishops, all the priests and all the monks”. And when someone appeared outstanding for his goodness and his generosity, the order was: “We already ordered you to kill everyone. And those whom you think better and more holy must be the first”. There is no need to comment on this.
An Accidental Saint
I felt that this introduction, given in the hopes of opening a door onto the world in which our Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz lived, was absolutely essential. It is a way to briefly know the circumstances surrounding his entire life, and the environment in which he lived: an ambience so distant from the heroic Christian which we now aim to sketch in with a few brush strokes. In order to better understand the situation he was living in, it is interesting to read the testimonies of the Process: they are generally given by simple people, by priests, by religious. Reading these will allow us to take into account the situation of the climate in which they moved, the religious environment of those witnesses whose memory we wish to remember: especially that of a boy seminarian, then parish priest, a religious, a pastor of souls, who has left his mark in the history of the Church and of our Congregation. There are many others who, in spite of their fame as good people, devoted worshipers, excellent religious, have passed on without leaving any trace; other than the few words they wrote during their life and the words which we read in their obituaries.
Paths to Reconsider
San Esteban de los Patos is a little spot near the city of Ávila. Simple and poor, with people who work small plots of land, and with a traditional religiousness, it is as austere as a desert which is constantly whipped by cold and wind; as were to also be the many villages in which Fr. Juan carried out his ministry. Born on September 25, 1891, and baptized two days later, he was to be the first of many children which made up his numerous family.
Together with his parents and family he received a simple and solid Christian education. His family took care of the church and also directed the prayers of the little Christian community; this became the cradle of the first call of the Lord. As it was of many of our religious of those early times.
His parish priest, aware of the echo of this call, prepared him for his entry into the diocese seminary in the city of Ávila, first as an outside pupil and later as a resident pupil, where he studied philosophy and theology. This was a completely normal process. The seminarians in Spain during that time lived within the intellectual climate of the neo-scholasticism which was in vogue. They were normally very closed up in themselves and took little regard of the world climate which was becoming established not only in their own country, but in all of Europe; and they did all this, as we have indicated above, within one of the strongest traditionalist bases known. They lived in an environment of profound, devotional piety and endorsed liturgy, much closer to Mystery than to the Word. Everything was appropriate for a future ministry of maintenance rather than of renewal. The data which we have concerning his progress through the seminary speak of an excellent piety. He was held up as example to his companions and he was not in the least unfriendly. He was a very good and alert student, with unsurpassable academic qualifications. That is to say, he had all that was necessary so that, on March 18, 1916, in Ávila, all the doors were open for him to be ordained priest by Msgr. Joaquín Beltrán y Asensio.
A Priest Whom They Called Holy and Religious in Bloom
To be a priest for ten years (1916-1926) in those villages of Hernansancho, San Juan de la Encinilla, Santo Tomé de Zabarcos, Sotillo de las Palomas and small places nearby, meant carrying out a delicate ministry, dealing with the poverty of his parishioners and the rigors of an excessively traditional religious situation. In many cases, he found that the Mother Church was seemingly ever more distant. It was not because he felt they were being intentionally isolated but because of the fact that he was situated in an area like Ávila: “traditionally Catholic”, with an age-old anti-clericalism - at times latent and on occasion based on justified recollections.
Don Mariano Garcia, as he was known in those days, was a good priest, one of those men who, with the passing of time, would be remembered enthusiastically with the words “he was a saint”. This was because of the example he gave them: in the way he was always before his faithful, to lead them in prayer; in how he presented them with the Holy Sacrament, day and night, in churches which were often below zero; in his charity and his ardent generosity for the poor and for all those who came to his door; in his constant care of the sick; in his fight against blasphemy (a very frequent evil in that peasant society). And there are many other things which have been collected among the testimonies of the first Process. His devotion to Mary, which was a permanent element in his preaching and ingenuous writings (scant and many of them not very personal, but when it was a question of homilies and sermons he was very eloquent and pleasing), his interest in the catechisis for children and adults; in this way this good priest left his mark among his parishioners. W-hen they heard of his death they all said that he was their martyr, that he belonged to them.
Another constant in Fr. Juan’s life was the wide search for vocations. He heard the call and like Samuel he could not discern exactly from whence it came and where it led. He was an austere and retiring personality. From the time he was a seminarian he wondered whether his way was truly that of serving God in the life of the monastery, as he had sensed since he was a child, or if it was to follow the Lord in an apostolic vocation as a diocesan priest. Three times he was to live through this interior tension and attempt the experience. The first time he was a seminarian with the Dominican Fathers of St. Thomas in Ávila (1913-1914), the next time with the Carmelite Fathers in Larrea-Amorebieta (Vizcaya), being then a parish priest - he had previously spent a year as chaplin of the Brothers of la Salle in Nanclares de Oca (Álava). His third attempt was when he was already a Dehonian religious, with the Trappists of Cóbreces (Santander), with the approval of his Superiors and his Spiritual Director.
The outcome was always the same: “For reasons of health, he is not suited to this kind of religious life”. Indeed he was clearly not a healthy man: his stomach, his nerves and other ailments which, in addition to the scant care he took of himself and the continual mortifications he practiced - including the use of disciplines and hair shirts - made it impossible for him to be accepted by those orders which, in those times, as in every religious life, were very rigorous on the ascetic level.
In the Footprints of Father Dehon
The paths of the Lord led him - in 1925, in Madrid, in the chapel of the Reparatory Religious Sisters, where he used to go to perform his habitual adoration before the Holy Sacrament - to meet Fr. William Zicke (founder of the Congregation in Spain, an ex-German missionary who was expelled from Cameroon during the First World War), and Fr. Joseph Goebbels (who played such a large part in the foundation of the Italian Province, and who was sent by Fr. Dehon to collaborate with Fr. Zicke and who was to become his Master of Novices).
The ideals of love, reparation and oblation, along with the eucharistic character of the new Congregation, moved him to make a new attempt, this time in Novelda (Alicante), where today there still exists the only college from among those founded in the time of Fr. Dehon. The day of Christ the King (October 31, 1926) he made his Religious Profession in the Congregation which opened its doors to him. His life was now joined with the Heart of Jesus and he was now in union with Him in a permanent offering to the Father, to make a complete and fitting reparation which would establish “His Reign in souls and in society”, as Fr. Dehon, who had died the year before, always said.
A year after the novitiate of Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz - the new name which he selected because of its association with Marian devotion and the Carmelites of Ávila - his Superior and Spiritual Director, Fr. Zicke, went with him to Puente la Reina, an old and dilapidated monastery of the Order of Malta in Camino de Santiago, which was being adapted to become an Apostolic School: one in which Fr. Dehon had placed so many hopes. When Fr. Juan went to Puente in 1927, it was a time of dignified poverty and many needs. He would consider all this as a positive turning along his path. His Superior and Director, who knew and valued the qualities hid behind an ascetic and religious personality, committed to him a task which was totally foreign to his monastic ideals: he was to be in charge of food and supplies for that tremendously needy seminary. He was also assigned to be a promoter of vocations during his travels through the País Vasco and Navarra districts, which, in the Spain which was coming into being, were islands of traditional and committed Catholicism. He had to seek secular collaborators in order to carry on this work, just like Fr. Dehon, who was short of money and full of plans, repeatedly indicated in his correspondence to Fr. Zicke.
It was not strange that Fr. Juan tried yet again. His attempt to join the Trappists became his third experience. The response to this ambition we already know: he was physically unsuited.
A Pilgrim “For the Love of God”
And so his task began again: travelling along roads, paths, becoming familiar with buses, trains and various places of lodging, of different foundations, etc. Religious houses and parishes were used as a starting point for establishing contacts and for collecting funds and initiating friendships for his “Apostolic School”. All was done “for the love of God”. He was on the road for fifteen to twenty days a month, in order to return every first Friday and make his retreat with his Community, as was the custom in those days.
The testimonies are always remarkable and the records tell us of “that father of yours who was a saint”. He was remembered thus on the part of secular people, of friends and collaborators, of the male and female religious who received him as a guest in their houses, where he always left his mark as a man of prayer, ready to be of service and humble. He was a gifted preacher who was always ready to preach if it was necessary. His love for the Eucharist led him to be one of the propagators of the work of Perpetual Adoration and to speak always of Merciful Love. Marian spirituality was another of his great loves and the continually itinerant life of these years allowed him to visit her sanctuaries. Afterwards he would inspire his seminarians by talking about these visits.
His stay in the Community was to be brief but fruitful. In addition, he was an example by means of his life of prayer: in his cell or in the chapel, with his fine classical seminary training and lively intelligence he stood out in the Community meetings regarding the study of morality or dogma, as was the habit to have in those days. His companions at that time remember that during the meetings he was able to quote by heart many long passages from the Fathers.
Even so, the seminarians, who were very lively, affirm that it was never difficult to be with him; they sought him out to go for walks or just to spend their free time together. They remember that he was always ready to talk to them about his varied and busy life, and about his experiences: he was good at keeping them entertained. Some of them remember how long he took in the celebration of the Mass, especially at the Consecration, so that, like St. Phillip Neri, he sometimes invited them to sit down or to leave him alone with his Lord.
In the Midst of the Storm
When the Republic was proclaimed in Spain, as we indicated previously, the situation grew more and more difficult every year and everywhere, also in the most traditionally Catholic places. The law was growing more and more anticlerical and oppressive, and a heavy atmosphere of threats of civil war and of violence was being created. Fr. Juan lived in this world and became part of it. He was always “in the street”, that is to say, in contact with people and newspapers, and he slowly acquired the awareness of his possible martyrdom, one of which those years (1931-1936) had given many examples. Many of his reactions against blasphemy and the common obscenity which was so much in vogue, demonstrate his zeal for the glory of God and His house - recalled by many people during the Process of his Cause - and his absence of care for the consequences.
It is worth remembering the path which was leading towards martyrdom; as it was forming within him and as it was revealed in the light of the Holy Spirit:
“It happened that a son of my Grandmother”, one of witnesses of Puente indicated, “a Capuchin religious missionary in China, had been taken prisoner by the communists. When Fr. Juan heard how upset my Grandmother was, the Servant of God lost no time in going to her house to comfort and console her. I remember that his words were ones of felicitation, more or less these: ‘Your son is a martyr! Oh, if only I could have the same luck to be persecuted and to die for Christ...”.
In 1936, when visiting his family, he spoke with his mother, his brother and his cousin: “You see, Victor, happy is he who has the luck to shed his blood for Our Lord!” This aspiration was the beginning of the Decree concerning Martyrdom, dated December 20, 2000, which opened the doors to his beatification.
The Paths of God
The fatigue of his work, his bad health and the preoccupations of his Superiors, explain the human vicissitudes of Fr. Juan while he was following the paths of the Lord, “which are not our paths”.
At the end of the course, 1935-36, he was sent to take a period of rest at Serranía de Cuenca, in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Tejeda, a splendid place, hidden and silent; there he was to recover his badly diminished strength and his serenity of spirit.
It was a long month and the tragedy could be perceived in the faces of those peasants: first welcoming, then withdrawn. They were days in which - as indicated by Fr. Lorenzo Cantó, the Superior of that mini-Community (also witness in Mexico and in Valencia) - Fr. Juan often led the conversation towards the theme of martyrdom, or would call attention to some hardened, blasphemous worker. Without ceasing to bear witness to his zeal, he would go to celebrate Mass in a parish from which the regular priest had fled. On July 18 the Civil War started, with all the precedents and consequences which we emphasized in the first pages. The people in the sanctuary of Garaballa had to leave, going in different directions; Fr. Juan “disguised as a peasant”, with an oversized jacket which earned him the nickname of Fr. Chaquetón in prison, set off on the road to Valencia. It was a city in which he was unknown and in this way, hiding in the house of some people who collaborated with the Congregation, he could remain undiscovered.
A Consistent Christian Till the End
Five days had passed since the military uprising. There was no time to make contact with anyone. During his journey he came across one of the many burnings of churches which darkened the blue Mediterranean sky of Valencia. A spectator, like many others, of that artistic and religious barbarianism, he could not help saying out loud that it was a barbarism, a crime and a sacrilege. When he was asked to explain what he had said and was accused of being right-wing, he answered simply and frankly that he was a priest. We know this from the conversations he had with a lawyer, his companion in prison, who was amazed that a person could be either so ingenuous or have so much courage.
The Model Prison of Valencia. Fourth Gallery, Cell 476. From the last days of July until the 23rd of August 1936. Priests, religious, secular people, right-wing people, they were all accumulated in the cells, patios and galleries. Many of them were waiting for unnecessary trials, to be released with the promise of “liberty” only to go to their death.
One can only imagine the interior tension of the prisoners and the violence of the prison officers in these first months of the war. And in the midst of this the presence and witness of Fr Juan who, like the ancient Christian martyrs, organized his life in spite of sentinels and prison wardens, in spite of people who ridiculed and threatened him, as if he was in a fervent Christian community.
Fr. Juanito, as they called him, may have been physically frail, but he was one of the most active. As one of the surviving witnesses recalls: “I remember having seen him every day in the patio of the prison praying with his prayer book for an hour and a half. He was seen praying so much that somebody said ‘One day Fr. Chaquetón is going to be killed like a sparrow’“.
We have a very personal and precious document to make us aware of how he lived this experience of martyrdom. There was a notebook found among his remains, pierced by bullets, in which can be found, in detail, the timetable of the prison and, to fit in with that, all the acts of community life. We know that he went as far as drawing the Stations of the Cross in his cell, which almost cost him the punishment-cell. We were told this by a plumber who saved him from that fate. One day, when he had the good fortune to keep the Holy Sacrament with him for a full day, his companions affirm that he was truly joyful in his adoration and contemplation.
He had sent Msgr. Phillipe his best wishes on his name day and a few days before his death he told him: “They are keeping me here, Reverend Father, imprisoned for almost three weeks because I uttered a few words of protest about the horrid spectacle of the churches being burned and profaned. May God be blessed, may His will be done in everything. I am very happy to be able to suffer something for He who suffered so much for me, a poor sinner”. He had no trial, but his condemnation was signed.
Without prior trial, on the night of August 23, 1936, without any accusation except that of being a priest and not hiding it, either inside or outside the prison, Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz, under the directive of “Freedom”, on a starlit night, in the warm air of Valencia, was called to come out of his cell. He collected a few of his personal belongings, subsequently realizing that freedom had another meaning: that of the doors being open to the liberating death of this flesh of corruption and sin. It was a new road towards the meeting with the Lord, along with all the saints and with all those martyrs he had venerated with so much fervor on his visit to Rome in 1927. We do not know if Fr. Juan, at that time, already understood that one day he would be one of their company.
It was in Campos de Silla, among olive trees, like a new Gethsemane. There were ten bodies waiting for the resurrection of the flesh. In the early hours of the morning, with all the legal requisites, they were to be buried in the municipal cemetery in a common grave without a name, except in the memory of the judge and the grave-digger.
In 1940 the identification of his remains took place by the mute presence of the cross of his profession, the scapular and the notebook. He was taken to Puente la Reina where, among the seminarians of that house, he had been a silent and faithful witness of a dedicated and generous life. Now the Church proposes, by his Beatification, that he be a model and intercessor for that Congregation in particular, and for the individual Churches where he manifested his life as an “alter Christus”.
The Pope has repeatedly told us that the XXI Century does not have much need of preachers but of witnesses. That is what we also aspire to in recovering the memory of many of these martyrs from the great holocaust of the 20th Century. It was a time in which, for many of them, our Congregation was a fertile mother.
- P.S. -
The Superior General, in his letter of December 18, 2000, expressed his joy over the beatification of Fr. Juan García Méndez, the “first Blessed S.C.J.”, our “Protomartyr”. And he added: “Having one of our brethren beatified must not be a reason for vainglory but must be recognized as a special grace of the Sacred Heart for the entire Dehonian Family. It is a gift which for us comes to crown this Jubilee year, the sacred gateway to the new millennium. It is a gift which arouses sentiments of gratitude in us and praise to the Lord.
“May this moment of grace give new life, within the entire Dehonian Family and especially in the S.C.J., to the awareness of the universal call to holiness (cf. LG 39-40), and the importance of setting in the center of our life that strong and solid spirituality which characterizes the charism of the Dehonian vocation. This is the common heritage transmitted by Fr. Dehon, the foundation of everything which we can be and do for the ‘Kingdom of the Heart of Jesus in souls and in society’.
“As a General Directive we propose that our dear Blessed brother should occupy an important space in our Communities, Districts, Regions and Provinces. To this end certain subsidies will be provided: in order to make known his story, to appreciate his personality and to imitate his witness.
“In reality his martyrdom was only the highest point of a life completely united to the person of Christ and His reparatory oblation.
“I should like to take advantage of this occasion”, concludes Fr. Bressanelli, “also to invite everyone... to regain the historic memory of those significant figures of our sisters and brothers, who can be models and incentives to live with greater intensity the vocation and the mission which we have in the Church and in the World of today, as some Provinces are already doing.
“May this event serve to strengthen our capacity for love and service for all. May Mary, Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz and our Founder intercede for this” (Fr. Virginio Domingo Bressanelli, Superior General).