Posted on 07/24/2013 7:17:23 AM PDT by Pyro7480
On 24 July 1936, exactly a week after the Spanish Civil War broke out, three women, who had taken up the habit of their countrywoman, Saint Teresa of Avila, were brutally executed by the anti-Catholic Republican faction in the Castilian city of Guadalajara. Their names were Sister Maria Pilar of St. Francis Borgia, age 58; Sister Maria Angeles of St. Joseph, age 31; and Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and St. John of the Cross, who was only 27 years old when she was martyred with her two friends.
The three had fled from their Discalced Carmelite monastery two days earlier, after the Mother Prioress decided that it was too dangerous for her community to remain inside their cloister. The eighteen sisters of the monastery took off the clothing of their religious vocation, put on the everyday dress of their previous lives, and left the Carmel as inconspicuously as they could, in order to find shelter with sympathizers in the city. Sisters Maria Pilar, Maria Angeles, and Teresa, along with two other sisters, ended up hiding in the basement of the Hibernia Hotel. However, this place proved to be no safe haven, and the five daughters of Saint Teresa ended up leaving to find a new shelter. While two made it safely to a boarding house, the remaining three were left walking through the streets. A woman member of the Republican militia noticed them, possibly due to the fact that the Carmelites kept their hair short inside the cloister, and shouted, "Look, nuns! Shoot them!"
Sister Maria Angeles, who had been labeled a "little angel" by the Mother Prioress due to her sanctity, was killed almost instantly by the resulting gunfire. She was shot through the heart. Sister Maria Pilar was also hit by Republican bullets, but lived long enough to shout "Viva Cristo Rey!" ("Long Live Christ the King!"), the same slogan adopted by the Cristeros nearly ten years earlier in Mexico. The militia members, many of whom were communists, took their vengeance upon her for this exclamation by shooting at her again and slashing her body with a knife. Before she died, Sister Maria Pilar, who loved to spend hours in front of her Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, echoed some of the final words of her Master on the Cross: "My God, pardon them. They don't know what they're doing."
The youngest of the three Carmelites, Sister Teresa, managed to escape the initial gunfire. But she got lost in the resulting confusion, and was ultimately taken captive by the militia members. They took her to a cemetery inside the city, with the possible intent of raping her. Along the way, the youthful Discalced Carmelite admonished her captors, who were insisting that she sing the praises of communism. But she took up Sister Maria Pilar's cry as her answer to their demands: "Viva Cristo Rey!" Just before they executed her by shooting her in the back, Sister Teresa raised her arms and mirrored her crucified Savior, just as Blessed Miguel Pro had nearly nine years earlier before a similar firing squad in Mexico City.
Sisters Maria Pilar, Maria Angeles, and Teresa were beatified by Pope John Paul II on 29 March 1987. Their feast day is 24 July, the anniversary of their birthday into Heaven. Blessed Martyrs of Guadalajara, pray for us!
Catholic ping!
Thanks!
That incident is Leftism in a nutshell.
Viva Cristo Rey!!!
Thank God for Franco.
Thanks for adding to my knowledge of Mexican religious history!
Mexico was dominated economically, spiritually and intellectually for centuries by the Catholic church. After the 1910-1917 revolution, strict anti-clerical laws were passed that sparked a 1926-1929 uprising by militant Catholics known as the Cristero War.
-- from the thread Mexican land donation to church draws fire
Well, this article is mainly about an incident from the Spanish Civil War, though Mexico is mentioned.
Whoa...the parallels, the repeated history, a reenactment, if you will, an almost literal re-crucification. I'll being thinking and rethinking about it for quite a while.
Thank you for posting this history!
Love, mercy, freedom and purity beat fist, shrapnel, coercion and filth now and forever. It may not look like it at the time, but at some point, somehow, Christus vincit. Jesus wins, and He wins big.
Martyrs. You can either say "This means something," or you can say "Nothing means anything."
I think those are the only choices.
Our leftists are no different, they're are just as capable of such brutality.
BTW didn’t many American leftists volunteer to fight for the republican side, under the ridiculously named ‘Abraham Lincoln Brigades’?
Yet "historians" to a man remember Franco as the arch-villain.
Yes.
If I had a tagline field of about 1,000 characters, I would quote that whole post!
Or as a punch line from Saturday Night Live.
Saturday Night Live, however funny it may have been at one time, was and is a part of the leftist entertainment establishment. Ridiculing an anti-communist was an absolute necessity for them, even if they were too damn dumb to understand why.
I think this is too one sided, there were both Catholics and protestants killed by both sides.
The civil war in a big part was brought on by the corruption of the Catholic Church, and they were bold because they knew that they would have Hitler and the other socialist leaders on their side.
It is a sad situation when Christians kill each other for the sake of religion, but even worse when both sides are being used by the anti god socialists.
Its a story about the murder of nuns. I'm not sure what the other side to the story would be.
This is actually a minor incident. There were several major massacres committed against the church during the Spanish Civil War.
Of course, when the so-called "republicans" weren't busy shooting nuns, they were shooting each other. I think its fairly clear they spent more energy killing each other than they did fighting Franco.
Orwell wrote a pretty good book about his experiences. He was with the "republicans" and he barely made it out alive when they decided he wasn't sufficiently reliable.
Its a story about the murder of nuns. I’m not sure what the other side to the story would be.
When the republicans gained power they decided that the government should no longer pay the clergy but that should be the Churches responsibly.
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