[Catholic Caucus] A Guadalupano Wins the Palm of Victory

“Viva Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe!” cried Miguel Gomez Loza, the final words of the Cristero leader before fatally shot in the back.

In death, just as he had in life, Miguel honored Our Lady, when the last thought on his mind, the last name on his lips was that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Empress of the Americas, the Patroness of Latin America, the Queen of Mexico.

For centuries, a very special relationship has existed between Catholics in Mexico and the woman who has lived in the hearts and souls of the faithful, ever since 1531.

Our Lady first appeared on December 9, 1531, to a humble, Chichimec peasant, Juan Diego (born Cuauhtlatoatzin “Talking Eagle,” 1474-1548), who lived in the Aztec Empire. One of the first Indigenous converts, he and his wife, Maria Lucia (?-1529) had been baptized, around 1524, by Brother Pedro de Gante (born Pieter van der Moere, circa 1480-1572), a Franciscan missionary originally from Ghent, Flanders.

On that early morning in 1531, after Juan Diego walked from his home village of Cuautitlan and neared Tepeyac Hill, he heard beautiful music, with harmonies and counterpoints, as if a choir of angels had chosen that hill for their choir loft.

Pausing to listen more closely, he heard a woman’s voice call out to him, “Juan Diego,” in Nahuatl, his native language. The sound filled his body and reverberated in his soul, as she summoned him to her at the top of the hill.

As he approached her, beauty and love surrounded him, dazzled him, captivated him.

“Son, Juan, where are you going?” asked the First Apparition, a mestiza, a syncretic blend of Indigenous and European ethnicities and cultures.

“Lady, I am going to attend the instruction in religious obedience that the friars give us in the settlement of Tlatelolco.”

After arriving at the episcopal palace of Bishop Juan de Zumarraga (1468-1548), Juan Diego kneeled and explained everything about the Apparition to New Spain’s first bishop, a Franciscan in the Order of Friars Minor, born in the Spanish Empire.

But the bishop was not convinced. So that same day, around nightfall, Juan Diego returned to the Hill. When the Second Apparition of Our Lady appeared, he explained his disappointing visit with the bishop and begged her to relieve him of the task and to appoint another, more credible person with the assignment.

The next day, Sunday, December 10, after attending Holy Mass and catechism class, Juan Diego returned to the bishop’s palace, around 10 in the morning and spoke with the bishop, who was more than a little annoyed with his visitor.

In mid-afternoon, Juan Diego returned to the Hill and spoke with the Third Apparition.

“He decided that in order to believe me and know that it was you, Mary, the true mother of God, who was sending me and ordering him to lodge you in a temple in such a deserted site, he requested of you some signal, token or sign to certify your will and convince him about my desire.”

But when tomorrow, December 11, arrived, Juan Diego was not able to meet Our Lady as she requested, because he needed to remain in the village and tend to his uncle Juan Bernardino, struck down with the plague.

As his uncle neared his last breath, on December 12, Juan Diego left very early in the pre-dawn hours to fetch a friar to administer the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to his dying uncle. On foot, he headed for the Church of Santiago Tlatelolco, a colonial-era Catholic church built out of stones removed from the piles of crumbling pyramids, constructed on a former site where human sacrifices had been performed in the ancient Aztec city of Tlatelolco.

When he neared Tepeyac Hill, he feared that Our Lady would appear to him and delay him in his errand, so to avoid meeting her, he took a slightly different route.

Falling to his knees, he explained why he had not visited her the previous day, as they had agreed.

In this Fourth Apparition, she accepted his apologies and allayed his fears by assuring him that his uncle would be fine, because – as Juan Diego later learned – as she appeared before him, she simultaneously appeared – as the Fifth Apparition – to his uncle, spontaneously returned his health and asked him to honor her with the title of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Among the crags and the rocks, in that December chill, Juan Diego found blooming, aromatic roses, lilies, carnations, violets, jasmines and rosemary. With his tilma still fastened around his neck, he pulled it around to the front and held up the two bottom corners as he placed all that he plucked into his cloak.

Descending the Hill, again he met Our Lady, who briefly held the flowers in her hands and placed them back in the cape.

Returning to the bishop’s palace, Juan Miguel explained, “I asked her for the promised sign. Without difficulty, she offered it to me in these roses that I bring you, which she delivered to me by her own hand and put in this cloak, having instructed me and sent me to climb the mountain to the same place where she had always awaited me, been in my presence and imparted these matters to me.”

As he opened his tilma, vibrant, fragrant flowers tumbled onto the floor, revealing the miraculous image on the cape. The bishop fell to his knees, as did all present, enraptured, bewildered, astonished.

Taking possession of the cloak, the bishop kept the venerated, full-length portrait safe in his private oratory for the next two weeks while workers hastily constructed the chapel to house the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the tilma made from maguey, an agave commonly known as century plant. When completed, Juan Diego resided next door to the chapel.

In the ten years following the Apparitions, an estimated 9 million in the Indigenous population converted to the Catholic faith, which led to the abolition of human sacrifice, an integral part of the Aztec culture.

For obeying Our Lady of Guadalupe, Juan Diego was canonized, in 2002, by the Church as the first Indigenous saint of the Americas. He has also been honored in history as one of the Four Guadalupan Evangelists. The three others include: Miguel Sanchez (1594-1674), Luis Lasso de la Vega (?-?) and Luis Tanco Becero (1602-72).

That aged tilma of agave fiber – which remains the most sacred object in the United Mexican States – was bestowed and revealed on December 12, 1531, the date on the then-used Julian calendar. When using today’s Gregorian calendar, that date of December 12 would be December 25, the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

One who honored that gift and its benefactress throughout his life was Miguel Gomez Loza.

Miguel arrived in the world a chubby, blond-haired, blue-eyed baby, on August 11, 1888, in Paredones, a town near Tepatitlan, in the Highlands of Jalisco, to parents Victoriana Gomez Gutierrez and Petronilo Loza Cortes, a Catholic family with deep Christian convictions.

When Miguel was only 19 months old, his kind-hearted father died, in March 1890. He had suffered from a fatal liver disease caused by stress, after a powerful and ruthless neighbor – who owned the land surrounding the family’s rural farmland – intimidated and threatened Loza, trying to force him to sell his property, the Palo Solo Ranch.

With his father dead, as soon as Miguel was big enough, he began working on the family farm, which primarily produced flaxseed, corn, beans and had a tract of grazing land for milk cows, horses and pigs.

Each day, he woke early to fetch the milk, accompanied by Eusebio Barcenas – a good friend of his father’s and long-trusted ranch foreman. After early morning chores, the family attended church, offered their prayers before breakfast and then Miguel trotted off to school with his older brother Elias (1884-1926).

Blessed with a vocation, his brother Elias entered the Conciliar Seminary of Guadalajara, in 1896. The first letter he mailed home bore a unique signature. As a sign of honor for their self-sacrificing mother, he had reversed the paternal-maternal surnames of Loza Gomez to Gomez Loza. Inspired, from then on, Miguel wrote his full name as Miguel Gomez Loza, in an act of devotion to his mother.

In an act of devotion to his spiritual mother, he always pinned to his clothing, over his heart, a small button with the image of Our Lady, to honor her, the model of benevolence, solace for the suffering, protector of the oppressed, comfort for the afflicted, a mother for the motherless, love for the unloved.

About the age of 20, he took it upon himself to gather signatures and petition the civil authorities to change the name of his hometown – Paredones – to that of El Refugio, to glorify Our Lady of Refuge of Sinners, the compassionate mother who helps sinners turn away from sin and turn toward God. After more than two years of negotiations, Paredones legally adopted the name El Refugio.

In an effort to sever the strong relationship between the faithful and the Church – so that the State would be the supreme authority in the land – Revolutionaries began propagating Socialist ideology.

In El Refugio, a new official arrived. A young devotee of the Socialism cult, first on his agenda: close the Catholic school and establish a secular school. The chosen classroom was cleaned out by the property owner, who left an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe tacked on the wall, the same spot she had graced for many years. When the new teachers arrived, they hung above the devotional image a picture of Benito Pablo Juarez Garcia (1806-72), the 26th president of Mexico, presidency usurper, killer of political enemies and an overall tyrant revered by the deluded.

Always fighting for Our Lady and for her honor, as soon as Miguel spotted the face of the vehemently anti-Catholic Juarez, he ripped it from the wall, tied it to his horse’s tail and took off in a gallop.

Miguel remained with his mother in El Refugio until his brother, Elias, received the Sacrament of Holy Orders from Guadalajara’s recently installed Archbishop Francisco Orozco y Jimenez (1864-1936). When the newly ordained priest returned to his hometown as its vicar, his arrival freed his younger brother to pursue his aspiration: having his own law practice.

Though torn about leaving behind loved ones, Miguel packed up his rosary and left for Guadalajara, where he began his pre-law studies, at the age of 25, in 1913. Not only did he involve himself in his school work, but he also joined Catholic groups concerned with the Socialist encroachment into every crevice of society and its resultant decivilization.

However, his education was interrupted, in 1914, when the Constitutionalists – also known as Carrancistas, the followers of Revolutionary General Jose Venustianio Carranza de la Garza (1859-1920) – grabbed control of Guadalajara. The brutal, anti-Catholic forces occupied Church properties, expelled priests and nuns, closed schools, executed political enemies. All acts were committed in the name of Constitutionalism, which sought to restore the principles of the Political Constitution of the Mexican Republic of 1857.

Briefly retreating to El Refugio, Miguel returned to Guadalajara, in 1915, and joined the Marian Congregation in the Santuario de San Jose de Gracia, a Catholic sodality with a special devotion to Our Lady. Another member, Anacleto Gonzalez Flores (1888-1927), became one of his best friends. Each day, the two Guadalupanos received the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist at the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Even when the Revolutionaries chased the clergy from the churches, the two would religiously visit church on Sundays and pray the Rosary together.

In 1916, he finished his preparatory classes and began studying for his law degree. That same year, to mobilize lay Catholics for social and political action, he began publishing a monthly magazine, El Cruzado (“The Crusader”). He also founded, on July 14, 1916, a local group of the Catholic Association of Mexican Youth, and named it the Gabriel Garcia Moreno Study Circle, in honor of Gabriel Gregorio Fernando Jose Maria Garcia Moreno y Moran de Butron (1821-1875), the former president of Ecuador, who – when assassinated – cried out his famous last words: “God does not die!”

After the assassination of the Mexican president, Carranza, on May 21, 1920, the Sonoran Triumvirate grabbed control of the throne of power.

As if prompted by the new regime, Socialists invaded Guadalajara, regularly agitating trouble with their Atheistic words and deeds. To celebrate Communist Labor Day, on May 1, 1921, Bolsheviks – enemies of social order with their official philosophy of dialectical materialism – led hundreds of demonstrators, parading around the city, stopping in front of the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady.

Racing up one of the bell towers, they raised a red and black flag. Red for Socialism. Black for anarchy.

Physically tall, heavy and solid, he pushed and punched his way through the hostile crowd, climbed the stairs of the bell tower where the flag whipped in the wind, tore it down, ripped it to shreds and threw the pieces into the air, with the red and black bits floating upon the enraged Bolsheviks below.

As soon as he exited the cathedral, the wrathful Revolutionaries attacked and beat him till blood dripped down his face.

Revolutionary hatred for Our Lady accelerated into such a ferocity, Luciano Perez Carpio (?-1957) – an employee in the administration of Mexican President Alvaro Obregon Salido (1880-1928) – planted a bomb in a basket of flowers at the high altar, right below Juan Diego’s tilma, in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico City, on November 14, 1921. Although the explosion damaged the altar and other nearby objects, the cape, somehow, escaped unharmed.

After years of determination and dedicated study, Miguel finished law school, in 1922, and passed his final exam, on June 22, at the State School of Jurisprudence, thereby receiving his law degree.

However, Revolutionary José Guadalupe Zuno Hernandez (1891-1980) – who elbowed his way up the ranks to congressman, then mayor of Guadalajara and finally governor of the state of Jalisco – refused to sign and approve Miguel’s professional license, the official document that authorized him to practice law. Zuno saw the Catholic leader as a political enemy of the State, because, among other things, he had filed numerous amparos, petitions for protection on behalf of targeted Catholics.

That same year, after several months of courtship, Miguel married his first and only girlfriend, Maria Guadalupe Sanchez Barragan (1902-?), on December 2, 1922. The two had met in the gardens of the Sanctuary of Saint Joseph, when she and her sisters walked by him and his best friend Anacleto sitting on a bench, waiting for church bells to signal Mass.

His brother, Elias, officiated the Nuptial Mass for the Sacrament of Matrimony, and his spiritual director, Father Vicente Maria Camacho y Moya (1886-1943), was also present at the ceremony held in the Association’s oratory next to the Templo de San Francisco, the same chapel where Anacleto had married Maria Concepcion Guerrero Figueroa, only 15 days earlier, on November 17.

After their honeymoon in Chapala, Jalisco, the newlyweds decided to move into Number 6 Colon, in Arandas, where he would open his law office. But before settling in, he met with authorities and requested – once again – the approval of his license, so that he could practice his profession without restrictions. But they never granted it, and he never received it.

The town’s Mayor Manuel B. Ascencio, without any judicial order, decreed the arbitrary exile of Miguel from Arandas, in March 1923. Around six in the evening, a platoon of soldiers from Guadalajara arrived at his office, seized him and dragged him to the barracks, where he was locked up. Sometime after midnight, they threw him into a vehicle and transported him to a crossroads near the town of Jesus Maria, where Lieutenant Colonel Abraham Leon Jaime (1885-1930) took command and handed him over to the rural authorities, who staged a mock execution to intimidate their captive. They then drove him to the border of Jalisco and Guanajuato and offered him freedom, if he promised to never return to Arandas. But he rejected the proposal, fearful that he would be gunned down via Ley Fuga, Law of Flight, a common practice in which authorities extrajudicially execute prisoners in the back, falsely claiming there were escaping.

Before they dumped him – still alive – in the middle of nowhere, they threatened that he would be executed if he ever showed up again in Arandas. Abandoned, he wandered around until he found his way to Jalpa de Canovas, Guanajuato, where he was greeted and welcomed by Father Pedro Gonzalez, a friend and enthusiastic promoter of the Association.

He remained in Jalpa de Canovas for three months, continuing his apostolic work, until he received a letter from his wife with wonderful news: in a few months, he was going to be a father. They decided she would leave everything behind in Arandas and relocate to Guadalajara, where he rejoined her and where his arrival was celebrated by the Catholic community.

Then with the presidential inauguration of Plutarco Elias Calles (born Francisco Plutarco Elias Campuzano, 1877-1945), in December 1924, the conflict between Socialists and Catholics intensified.

In Guadalajara, churches and the seminary were closed to the faithful, the cathedral was turned into a hotel, the San Antonio church was converted into a stable. Anti-Catholics burned kneelers, confessionals and images of the saints.

In May 1925, Archbishop Orozco presented Miguel and Anacleto, each, with a Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice decoration – established by Pope Leo XIII for distinguished service to the Church – which they had earned in recognition for their defense of the faith, an honor bestowed by His Holiness Pius XI (born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, 1857-1939).

Under heavy scrutiny, the government raided and closed the Association’s center in Guadalajara, on February 23, 1926, incarcerating Miguel and others. But he never wasted a minute. Even behind bars, he saw it as an opportunity to continue his lay apostolate. He introduced his fellow inmates to God, prayed the Rosary and sang hymns. On March 1, 1926, his lawyer secured his release, but as soon as he was set free and reached the gates to the outside world, soldiers rearrested him.

Fearless, dauntless, over the years, in his struggle to free the Church from the shackles of Socialism, he was arrested an estimated fifty-nine times, as he relentlessly worked to encourage the faithful to peacefully fight against the successively repressive regimes.

After attending the funeral of his brother, who died on December 20, 1926, in El Refugio, Miguel returned to Guadalajara. It was then that Anacleto – one of the leaders of the Liberation Movement – agreed to lift the weapons ban imposed on Catholic laity groups, finally permitting them to take up arms and participate in the Cristero War against the tyrannical government.

Appointed civil leader of the Los Altos region, on January 5, 1927, Miguel slipped out of Guadalajara, reluctantly leaving behind his wife and three very young daughters, all namesakes of Our Lady: Maria de Jesus (born on September 16, 1923); Maria Guadalupe (born on July 25, 1925); and Maria del Rosario (born on November 1, 1926).

Then tragedy hit. On April 1, 1927, a federal firing squad executed his good friend Anacleto, whose last words were, “Hear Americas for the second time: I die, but God does not! Viva Cristo Rey!”

Subsequently, the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty – the organizing force behind the Cristero War – appointed Miguel provisional governor of the liberated areas in the state of Jalisco, granting him jurisdictional authority for the administrative organization of the Holy Cause, tasking him with tending to the needs of the National Guard, the Liberation Movement’s military force.

Daily, he traveled through various regions, towns and villages, comforting the soldiers of Christ, encouraging them, paying them, issuing instructions. He met with Cristero leaders to organize the armed struggle, inspected troops and camps, issued communications and circulars, arbitrated disputes, requested tax payments for the government of the liberated areas, attended conferences and more.

All the while, it was not uncommon to see his chubby body surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, all on their knees, offering their daily prayers.

His thin white face, uplifted, praying – with just a hint of a Spanish accent passed down from his Iberian ancestors – and ending the five mysteries with a beautiful prayer composed by his martyred friend, Anacleto:

Merciful Jesus! My sins are more than the drops of Your precious Blood that You shed for me. I am not worthy to belong to the Army that defends the rights of Your Church and fights for You. I wish I had never sinned, so that my life might be a pleasing offering in Your divine eyes. Wash me from my iniquities and cleanse me from my sins. By Your holy Cross, by Your death, by my Most Holy Mother of Guadalupe, forgive me. I have not known how to do penance for my sins; therefore, I want to receive death as a deserved punishment for them. I do not want to fight, nor live, nor die, but only for Your Holy Church and for You. My Mother of Guadalupe, accompany this poor sinner in his agony. Grant that my last cry on earth and my first song in heaven may be: Viva Cristo Rey!

After federal troops burned down his headquarters in Cerro Gordo, he established, in the middle of June 1927, a new command post on Rancho Presa de Lopez, just to the northeast of Arandas, where federal soldiers hanged bodies of Cristeros in trees along a river bank south of town, to intimidate Catholics.

By the end of August, he spent precious hours with his mother, wife and daughters on a ranch in Los Salados, Guanajuato. The last time he saw his wife, she greeted him in the battlefield, as she held in her arms little Rosario, who – of all three girls – favored her father the most.

Because of his leadership ability and moral integrity, the League increased his responsibility by entrusting him, on September 3, 1927, with the joint administration of the western part of the state of Guanajuato.

Life was difficult. He often went days without eating. Too little food. Too little sleep. Too cold. Too hot. Too wet. Too dry. Too much walking. But wherever he went, whatever the circumstances, each day he prayed the Rosary’s string of Hail Marys, whether in the field or in the woods or on the road.

By March 1928, Miguel moved his residence to Palmitos, in the western highlands of San Julian, in Jalisco.

That month, due to some matter of utmost urgency, he stuffed some papers into a beat-up leather briefcase and left Palmitos, on March 21, 1928. Accompanied by assistants Dionisio Vazquez and Macario Hernandez, the trio traveled southerly, an indirect route to their destination, Guadalajara, and decided to stop and give their horses a rest at El Lindero ranch, near Atotonilco el Alto.

While there, they chatted with the local civil leader and one of his colleagues, all peacefully enjoying the day in a farmhouse abandoned due to the government-ordered reconcentrations, which forced peasants out of their homes to keep them from aiding and abetting the Cristero soldiers.

All of a sudden, they realized that a federal cavalry of at least twenty mounted soldiers – criminals and thieves – headed toward the farm next door. Division General Jesus Maria Ferreira Knappe (1889-1938) had ordered his men to collect whatever harvests they could, so they brought donkeys along to tote sacks of corn.

With no time to get their horses, Miguel made a snap decision that they should all run off in different directions.

As the others bolted, Miguel hesitated. A civil leader, one of the top commanders in charge of the government of the Cristeros, he took precious seconds to grab the briefcase, to safeguard the identity of military persons and camp locations.

His assistant Hernandez – the civil leader of Atotonilco – successfully escaped, hid in a plumbago bush next door and watched as Miguel was captured, beaten, lassoed, tied to a saddle horn, dragged up and down a hill and across a pasture.

When the horse stopped, Miguel lay face down in the dirt, still wearing the small button with an image of Our Lady over his heart.

Standing over the near-dead Cristero, a soldier pulled out his weapon and fired a barrage of bullets into the Catholic’s back, killing him, Ley Fuga.

But not before Miguel cried out with his last breath, “Viva Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe!”

“Beato Miguel Gomez Loza, Laico,” by Boletin de Pastoral, Revista Diocesana Mensual, San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, Noviembre de 2007, No. 304.

“Beato Miguel Gomez Loza, Laico Martir,” by the Archdiocese of Guadalajara Press Office.

“Beato Miguel Gomez Loza: Trabajo de Investigacion,” by the Comision Diocesana de Causas de Canonization, Guadalajara.

“Felicidad de Mexico en la Admirable Aparicion de la Vírgen Maria Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe,” which was the reissued, posthumous, expanded edition of his 1666 “Origen Milagroso del Santuario de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe,” by Luis Tanco Becero (1602-72), first published in 1675.

“Fundamento de la Fama de Martirio del Beato Miguel Gomez Loza,” by Boletin de Pastoral, Revista Diocesana Mensual, San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, Noviembre de 2007, No. 304.

“Huei tlamahuicoltica omonexiti in ilhuicac tlatocacihuapilli Santa Maria totlaconantzin Guadalupe in nican huei altepenahuac Mexico itocayocan Tepeyacac,” Luis Lasso de la Vega (?-?), first published in 1649.

“Imagen de la Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe,” by Miguel Sanchez (1594-1674), first published in 1648.

Seems like we've been having some trouble, lately, here in America with socialists waving red and black flags.

3 posted on 12/12/2025 11:26:31 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)

And if anybody is wondering why Mexico is such a mess today, they have only to look at the last 100 years or so: a successful communist revolution followed by a succession of kleptocracies. The disaster BEGAN with an outright rejection of God and a violent persecution of His Church.

4 posted on 12/12/2025 11:33:04 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)

The US took part in the Cristeros Wars against religion. The Calles government was supplied with arms and ammunition by the American government later in the war. In at least one battle, American pilots provided air support for the Federal Army against the Cristero rebels.

Following the assassination of President Obregon, Calles took office.

An op-ed from the NY Times by President Obregon in 1926:
https://www.nytimes.com/1926/11/08/archives/obregon-blames-church-for-strife-he-says-it-can-still-save-what-is.html

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[Catholic Caucus] A Guadalupano Wins the Palm of Victory

The Son of God became man for our salvation, but only in Mary and through Mary. – Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716).