Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J.
Today is the feast day of Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J., who was martyred 80 years ago today in Mexico.
Pro was born in Guadalupe in 1891. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1911, the same year that Mexican president Porfirio Díaz was overthrown. In the resulting chaos, an anti-clerical government came to power in the country and the Jesuit novices had to flee to Los Gatos, California. Pro eventually found his way to Belgium, where he was ordained in 1925. A year later, he returned to Mexico to find a church suffering under what writer Graham Greene called “the fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth.” In his book The Lawless Roads, Greene described Pro’s clandestine efforts on behalf of Mexico’s Catholics:
Within two months of Pro’s landing, President Calles had
begun the fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of
were closed, Mass had to be said secretly in private houses, to administer the
Sacraments was a serious offence. Nevertheless, Pro gave Communion daily to
some three hundred people, confessions were heard in half-built houses in
darkness, retreats ‘were held in garages. Pro escaped the plain-clothes police
again and again. Once he found them at the entrance to a house where he was
supposed to say Mass; he posed as a police officer, showing an imaginary badge
and remarking, ‘There’s a cat bagged in here’, and passed into the house and
out again with his cassock under his arm. Followed by detectives when he left a
Catholic house and with only fifty yards’ start, he disappeared altogether from
their sight round a corner - the only man they overtook was a lover out with
his girl. The prisons were filling up, priests were being shot, yet on three successive
first Fridays Pro gave the Sacrament to nine hundred, thirteen hundred, and
fifteen hundred people.
Pro was finally captured by the government in November
1927. President Calles ordered him
executed by firing squad. As he was
being led to his execution, he forgave the soldiers. Declining a blindfold, he stood with his arms
out in imitation of the crucified Christ.
His last words were “Viva Cristo Rey!” (Long live Christ the King!).
Pro was beatified in 1998 by Pope John Paul II. His story is an inspiring one and is worth remembering as we prepare to celebrate
Sunday’s feast of Christ the King.
on November 23rd, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Fr. Pro was a hero and clearly a martyr in the best sense and a rather attaractive character as well. But doesn’t Greene have his age wrong? If he was born in 1891, he would have been ordained when he was 34/35, which is what one would expect for a Jesuit.