Blessed Luis Campos Górriz

Blessed Luis Campos Górriz was a Spanish lawyer from Valencia, a husband and father, who from his student years led Catholic lay associations. He died for the faith in 1936, during the persecution of the Church in Spain. The Church commemorates him on November 28.

He was born on June 30, 1905, in Valencia. From childhood until he finished secondary school he studied at the city’s College of Saint Joseph, run by the Jesuits, and he belonged to the Marian Sodality. At the University of Valencia he studied law together with philosophy and letters, and he earned his doctorate in law in Madrid. From 1930 he worked as a lawyer.

Alongside his profession he gave himself eagerly to the apostolate and to works of charity, as the decree on his martyrdom records. He was secretary and president of the Federation of Catholic Students in Valencia and belonged to the governing board of the national confederation of Catholic students. He presided over the Valencia Marian Sodality of the Immaculate Virgin and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. He was also active in the Catholic Association of Propagandists, an association of lay Catholics: first as secretary of its center in Valencia, then as secretary general of the whole association. While still a student he accompanied the association’s first president, Ángel Herrera Oria, later a cardinal, on journeys through Europe.

In 1933 he married Carmen Arteche and settled in Madrid. A daughter was born to them. The marriage was short: in April 1936 Carmen died, and Luis was left a widower with a small child.

The outbreak of the civil war found him in Torrent, near Valencia, where his father lived. The first months passed in relative calm. On November 28, 1936, a group of armed men detained him. After an interrogation he was taken to a place called Picadero de Paterna, not far from Valencia, and shot there. He was 31 years old. It is reported that he went to his death with a rosary in his hand and forgave those who were killing him.

Because he had been a pupil of the Jesuits, his cause for beatification was conducted together with that of eleven religious of the Society of Jesus killed in the same persecution; in that group he is the only layman. John Paul II beatified him on March 11, 2001, in Saint Peter’s Square, among 233 martyrs from Spain whose list is headed by Father José Aparicio Sanz. The pope said then that they were killed because they were Christians, and that none of them had been involved in political or ideological struggles. The Roman Martyrology says of Luis that with a glorious death he crowned a life devoted to apostolic zeal and works of charity.