As many of you know, in a chapel in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, we are blessed to have what we believe is the only relic from the holy tilma that bears the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The relic was a gift to my predecessor, Archbishop John J. Cantwell, from the archbishop of Mexico City, the Servant of God Luis María Martinez.
During the persecutions that followed the Mexican Revolution of 1917, Cantwell was a quiet hero, working with the Knights of Columbus and others to welcome thousands who were fleeing the terrors, providing refuge and helping them make a new home in Los Angeles.
In 1941, Martinez presented him with this precious piece of the tilma in gratitude for his courage and hospitality.
The Mexican bishops recently marked the 100th anniversary of the anti-Catholic law that was the basis for the violence with a beautiful and important message.
Imposed under the post-revolutionary regime of President Plutarco Elías Calles, this law criminalized much of the Church’s work and ministry and subjected priests to state control, effectively outlawing public worship.
Churches, seminaries, convents, and other Church properties were seized; many were closed, desecrated, or destroyed.
Priests were executed by firing squad; some were gunned down while celebrating Mass. Religious sisters were driven from the country. Ordinary Catholics, even teenagers, were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. The regime strung up many of its victims on telegraph poles along the highways.
At the height of the bloodshed, Calles boasted that he would wipe the memory of Catholicism from the Mexican consciousness within a generation. He was wrong.
I grew up in Monterey in the generation that followed those persecutions. We knew the martyrs’ names and we knew their stories. We knew that they forgave their persecutors, and that they died with these words on their lips: “Long live Christ the King and Our Lady of Guadalupe!”
Especially here in Los Angeles, we need to remember these persecutions.
Our local church has been shaped by the refugees welcomed by Cantwell, who became pillars of our parishes and communities, and who included local saints like Venerable Mother María Luisa Josefa of the Most Blessed Sacrament, known as “Mother Luisita,” and Blessed Maria Inés Arias.
Our annual December procession in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the city’s oldest religious festival, was started in 1931 by the Mexican families who fled the persecutions.
So, we should never forget where they came from. Never forget that not that long ago, and not that far from here, tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters were killed for living their faith and defending their faith.
We should all know about Blessed Miguel Pro, the Jesuit priest who faced a firing squad, arms open wide like a cross — maybe the only martyr in Church history whose execution was photographed. And also, we should know Blessed Salvador Huerta Gutiérrez, a father of 12 and probably the only auto mechanic in the Communion of Saints.
Our young people should know the story of the Servant of God María de la Luz Camacho. She was a 27-year-old catechist in Coyoacán when an anticlerical youth gang came to destroy her church. She stood in front of the door, arms stretched wide, and proclaimed, “!Viva Cristo Rey!” They shot her through the heart. But her church somehow was spared.
In our cathedral, we have a youth chapel that memorializes one of the youngest martyrs, St. José Sánchez del Rio.
When he refused to renounce his faith, government agents sheared the skin off the soles of his feet and made him walk barefoot through the streets to a cemetery, where they shot him. As he walked, he kept calling out: “Long live Christ the King! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!” He was 15 years old.
“Christian memory is not nostalgia for the past: it is strength for the present,” the Mexican bishops write in their message.
We need to remember that the persecution of Christians is not a thing of the past. The Vatican says that more than a dozen Christians are killed every day simply for living their faith in Jesus; more than 400 million Christians worldwide face violence and persecution.
And we can never take our religious freedom for granted.
As the Mexican bishops write: “Long live Christ the King and Our Lady of Guadalupe! One hundred years later, that cry remains a program for life: to recognize that no human power is absolute, because God alone is Lord of conscience and of history.”
Pray for me and I will pray for you.
And let us ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to give strength to today’s martyrs, and to give us all the courage to be witnesses to our faith in her Son.
