Bulletins

November 17, 2013

Download the Bulletin as a PDF

José Ramón Miguel Agustín Pro entered the Jesuits at the age of twenty, as remarkable for his playful spirit as he was for the long hours as spent in the chapel. That same year the Mexican revolution unleashed waves of persecution against the Church. By 1914 the Jesuits had fled Mexico and Miguel Pro continued his studies in Spain and Belgium.

The 1917 Constitution of Mexico attempted to suppress the Church by mandating secular schools, outlawing monasteries, restricting religious worship to church buildings, curtailing the property rights of religious organizations and forbidding religious garb in public as well as public criticism of the socialist government by the clergy. Ironically there used to be many priests and religious in this country's recent history that would not object to many of those anti-clerical provisions.

In 1926 the newly ordained Fr. Miguel Pro returned to Mexico, which was being governed by President Plutarco Elias Calles, whom Graham Greene described as having instigated the "fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth." Fr. Pro's ministry was almost entirely clandestine, going about in disguises so as to avoid arrest. After just over a year he was apprehended and executed. Declining a blindfold, he faced his executioners on November 23, 1927, with a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other and held his arms out in imitation of the crucified Christ and shouted out, "May God have mercy on you! May God bless you! Lord, You know that I am innocent! With all my heart I forgive my enemies!" Before the firing squad was ordered to shoot, Pro raised his arms in imitation of Christ and shouted the defiant cry of the Cristeros, "Viva Cristo Rey!"

Long live Christ the King!

Fr. Christopher J. Pollard