St. José Sánchez del Río was a Mexican Cristero (“soldier for Christ”) who was martyred for refusing to renounce his Catholic faith.
The Cristero War erupted in 1926 after the Mexican government began enforcing anti-clerical laws written into the Mexican Constitution. President Plutarco Elias Calles, who took office in 1924, violently targeted the Church, seizing church property, closing religious schools and convents, and exiling or executing priests. In response, largely Catholic populations across Mexico began taking up arms against the government, with the war cry “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”)
Nicknamed “Joselito,” José was born March 28, 1913, in Sahuayo, Michoacán, Mexico.
Wanting to defend the faith and rights of Catholics, he followed in the footsteps of his two older brothers and asked his mother for permission to join the Cristeros when the conflict broke out.
She objected, telling him that he was too young.
“Mama,” he replied, “do not let me lose the opportunity to gain heaven so easily and so soon.”
His parents relented and he joined the rebel army as a flagbearer.
On Feb. 5, 1928, the 14-year-old boy was captured during a battle and imprisoned in the church sacristy. In order to terrorize him, soldiers made the boy watch the hanging of one of the other captured Cristeros. But José encouraged the man, saying, “You will be in heaven before me. Prepare a place for me. Tell Christ the King I shall be with Him soon.”
In prison, he prayed the rosary and sang songs of faith. He wrote a beautiful letter to his mother telling her that he was resigned to do God's will. José's father tried desperately to ransom his son, but he was unable to raise the money in time.
On Feb. 10, 1928, his captors brutally tortured the boy – sheering off the skin of the soles of his feet and forcing him to walk on salt, followed by walking through the town to the cemetery. The young boy screamed with pain but would not give in.
At times the soldiers stopped him and said, “If you shout ‘Death to Christ the King,’ we will spare your life.” But he answered: “Long live Christ the King! Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe!”
Once he arrived at the cemetery, José was asked once more if he would deny his faith. Once more he shouted out “Long live Christ the King!”, and was summarily shot.
His mother and father were among those forced to witness his execution.
He was canonized on Oct. 16, 2016, by Pope Francis, and his feast day is Feb. 10. He is the patron saint of children and teenagers.
During a 2021 dedication of a statue of St. José Sánchez del Río at the Martyrs Shrine in Guadalajara, Mexico, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, the Archbishop of Guadalajara, encouraged young people to look to “the witness and example of St. José Sánchez” to find meaning in their lives.
The cardinal lamented that “there are many young men and women who aren’t finding what to do with their lives, they don’t know what they are in this world for, they’re not discovering what they came into this world for, and live an existential void.”
These young people, he continued, “seek to fill that existential void with things that apparently fill them, but the only thing they produce is a deeper void.”
He urged them to “look at the testimony of a young man, born into an ordinary Christian family, but who had the courage to discover Christ and to be faithful to Him.”
— Vatican News Service, Catholic News Agency, Wikipedia
On Feb. 8 the Church commemorates the life of St. Josephine Bakhita, a Canossian Sister who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Sudan in the 19th century.
Josephine Bakhita was born in a small village in the Darfur region of Sudan in 1869. She was kidnapped while working in the fields with her family and subsequently sold into slavery. Her captors asked for her name but she was too terrified to remember, so they named her "Bakhita," which means "fortunate" in Arabic.
Retrospectively, Bakhita was very fortunate, but the first years of her life do not necessarily attest to it. She was tortured by her masters, who cut her 114 times and poured salt in her wounds to ensure that the scars remained. "I felt I was going to die any moment, especially when they rubbed me in with the salt," she wrote.
She bore her suffering valiantly, though she did not know Christ or the redemptive nature of suffering. She also had a certain awe for the world and its creator. "Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself: 'Who could be the Master of these beautiful things?' And I felt a great desire to see Him, to know Him and to pay Him homage."
After being sold a total of five times, Bakhita was purchased by Callisto Legnani, the Italian consul in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Two years later, he took Bakhita to Italy to work as a nanny for his colleague, Augusto Michieli. He, in turn, sent Bakhita to accompany his daughter to a school in Venice run by the Canossian Sisters.
Bakhita felt called to learn more about the Church, and she was baptized with the name "Josephine Margaret." In the meantime, Michieli wanted to take Josephine and his daughter back to Sudan, but Josephine refused to go back.
The disagreement escalated and was taken to the Italian courts, where it was ruled that Josephine could stay in Italy because she was a free woman. Slavery was not recognized in Italy, and it had also been illegal in Sudan since before Josephine had been born.
Josephine remained in Italy and decided to enter the Canossian community in 1893. She made her profession in 1896 and was sent to northern Italy, where she dedicated her life to assisting her community and teaching others to love God.
St. Josephine was known for her smile, gentleness and holiness. She was beatified in 1992 and canonized in 2000 by Pope John Paul II. She is the first Sudanese to be canonized and is the patron saint of the country.
— Catholic News Agency