Blessed Francisco Castelló Aleu

Blessed Francisco Castelló Aleu was a young chemist from Lleida in Catalonia and a member of Catholic Action. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War he was imprisoned, and a few months later, at the age of twenty-two, he was condemned by a people’s tribunal and shot for his faith. The Church commemorates him on September 29.

He was born on April 19, 1914, in Alicante, into a family of Catalan origin, and at baptism he received the name Francisco de Paula. His father died in the very year of his birth. His mother, a schoolteacher, moved with the children to Lleida and raised her son and two daughters on her own until her death in 1929. He was very gifted and strove to master his strong, impetuous temperament. He attended the school of the Marist Brothers.

He then studied at the Jesuits’ Chemical Institute in Sarrià, Barcelona, where the Jesuit Román Galán became his spiritual director. In 1934 he completed his studies at the University of Oviedo and took a job in a factory in Lleida; he also helped without pay with teaching at a state secondary school. At work he generously supported the poor and worked for the education and social advancement of his colleagues.

He belonged to the Marian Congregation, and in Lleida he was active in the Federation of Young Christians of Catalonia and in the work of parish Spiritual Exercises. He taught the catechism, did works of charity, and spread the Catholic press. He hoped to start a family, and in May 1936 he became engaged to María Pelegrí.

On July 1, 1936, he began his military service, and in the army too he did not hide his faith. After the outbreak of the civil war, on July 21, he was arrested on the charge of being a “fascist” and a Catholic. The first charge was false, since he belonged to no party; the second was true. One of his relatives urged him to renounce his faith or at least to hide it, but Francisco refused. In prison he prayed, served his fellow prisoners, and strengthened them with the Rosary and with hymns.

On September 29 he stood before the people’s tribunal and calmly professed his faith. According to the decree on his martyrdom, after hearing the death sentence he said that the greatest happiness in this world is to die for Christ, and that if he had a thousand lives he would give them without hesitation. Before his death he wrote three letters: to his sisters, to his spiritual director, and to his fiancée, to whom he confided that he was filled with an unexpected, inexplicable joy. He forgave his persecutors. On the way to his execution he sang the Credo and encouraged the others who had been condemned. He was shot that same day near the cemetery of Lleida.

In 1959 the bishop of Lleida opened his cause. On March 11, 2001, in Rome, John Paul II beatified him together with 232 other martyrs of the religious persecution in Spain. In his homily he said that Francisco did not want to hide but offered his youth to God and his brethren, and he called his letters an example of strength, generosity, serenity, and happiness.