Saints Christopher Magallanes and Companions

Saints Christopher Magallanes and Companions are twenty-five martyrs of Mexico: twenty-two diocesan priests and three laymen. They died between 1915 and 1937, most of them during the persecution of the Church between 1926 and 1928. The Church remembers them together on May 21, the anniversary of their canonization.

In the first decades of the 20th century the Mexican authorities passed laws directed against the Church. In 1926 public worship was suspended, foreign priests were expelled, and Catholic schools were closed. Some of the faithful took up arms; this armed resistance became known as the Cristero uprising. Almost all priests had to leave their communities, but nearly a hundred stayed with the faithful despite the danger, to administer the sacraments, teach, and visit the sick. Among them were the priests of this group. The Holy See stressed that they kept out of politics and took no part in the armed struggle.

Christopher Magallanes was born on July 30, 1869, in Totatiche in the state of Jalisco, and was ordained a priest in 1899. He was parish priest of his hometown and a missionary among the Huichol people. He spread the praying of the Rosary, and when the authorities closed the seminary in Guadalajara, he opened a seminary in his own parish. He rejected violence and wrote about it in the press. Arrested on May 21, 1927, and accused of supporting the uprising, he was shot without trial on May 25 in Colotlán together with his parochial vicar, Father Agustín Caloca. He encouraged him, saying that it would be only a moment, and then heaven. He declared that he was dying innocent and asked God that his blood might serve the union of his fellow Mexicans.

The first of the companions, Father David Galván, was killed in Guadalajara as early as 1915. The last, Father Pedro Maldonado, died in 1937 in Chihuahua, after being beaten the day before. The priests worked in the dioceses of Guadalajara, Durango, Chilpancingo-Chilapa, Morelia, and Colima. Most of them were shot; several were hanged. Many died crying out: “Long live Christ the King and Our Lady of Guadalupe!”

The three laymen, Manuel Morales, Salvador Lara, and David Roldán, were young members of Catholic Action and helped Father Luis Batis, the parish priest of Chalchihuites. They tried to defend him and were killed together with him in August 1926. Manuel was twenty-eight years old and had a wife and three small children. Before he was shot, he said that he was dying, but God does not die, and He would take care of his wife and children.

John Paul II beatified them on November 22, 1992, the Solemnity of Christ the King, and canonized them on May 21, 2000, in Saint Peter’s Square, during the Great Jubilee. In his homily he said that they all accepted martyrdom freely and calmly, explicitly forgiving their persecutors. The Roman Martyrology also commemorates Christopher Magallanes and Agustín Caloca on May 25, the day of their death.