On Nov 20, Mexico honors Cristero martyrs beatified in 2005, recalling the 1926-29 war where thousands died defending Catholic freedom against state persecution. ¡Viva Cristo Rey!
Newsroom (20/11/2025 Gaudium Press) Every November 20, Catholic churches across Mexico fill with prayers and solemn remembrance as the faithful commemorate the beatification of 13 Cristero martyrs, a rite performed in Guadalajara’s Jalisco Stadium that year by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. This date joins May 21 – when Pope John Paul II canonized 25 others in 2000 – as twin liturgical anchors honoring those who gave their lives between 1926 and 1929 in one of Latin America’s bloodiest religious conflicts.
The Cristero War, known in Mexico as the Guerra de los Cristeros or simply La Cristiada, erupted as a grassroots rebellion against aggressive anti-clerical policies enforced by President Plutarco Elías Calles. What began as scattered local uprisings in western states quickly swelled into a full-scale insurgency that at its peak tied down tens of thousands of federal troops and claimed an estimated 90,000 lives, combatants and civilians combined.
The roots of the confrontation stretch back to the 1917 Constitution, which severely curtailed Church rights: priests were denied citizenship privileges, religious orders were suppressed, Catholic schools were nationalized, and the state claimed ultimate authority over ecclesiastical matters. Yet it was the 1926 Ley Calles – formally the Law for Reforming the Penal Code – that ignited open revolt. The legislation imposed draconian limits on the number of priests permitted per state, banned religious garb in public, outlawed religious education, and gave local governors sweeping powers to close churches.
When peaceful protests, including a petition bearing two million signatures and a nationwide economic boycott, failed to move the government, Mexico’s bishops took the extraordinary step of suspending public worship on July 31, 1926. Churches were locked, bells fell silent, and the Eucharist was distributed one last time before altars were shuttered. As federal agents moved to seize temple keys, spontaneous clashes erupted, giving birth to the iconic Cristero cry: “¡Viva Cristo Rey y Santa María de Guadalupe!”
From August to December 1926, dozens of independent revolts flared across Jalisco, Michoacán, Colima, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and Aguascalientes. Farmers, ranchers, and villagers – many armed only with rifles, machetes, or improvised weapons – formed guerrilla bands. Women organized the clandestine Brigadas Femeninas de Santa Juana de Arco, smuggling ammunition in market baskets, carrying intelligence, and sustaining supply lines under constant threat of execution.
In 1927, the movement gained strategic direction when General Enrique Gorostieta Velarde, a professional soldier and lapsed Catholic turned paid commander, assumed leadership of the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty forces. Though often outnumbered and outgunned by a federal army equipped with machine guns, aircraft, and U.S.-supplied weaponry, Cristero units scored stunning tactical victories through mobility and intimate knowledge of rugged terrain.
Pope Pius XI lent moral weight to the struggle with his 1926 encyclical Iniquis Afflictisque, which condemned the “horrible and sacrilegious crimes” being committed against the Church in Mexico. Some bishops, concluding that all non-violent avenues had been exhausted, quietly endorsed armed defense as morally licit under just-war criteria.
The government’s response grew increasingly brutal. In affected zones, generals implemented a scorched-earth “reconcentration” policy: entire rural populations were herded into cities, crops were burned, livestock confiscated, and villages razed to deny rebels food and recruits. Thousands of non-combatants perished from starvation and disease.
By early 1929, U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow brokered negotiations that led to the June 21 arreglos (agreements). Public worship resumed, exiled bishops returned, and amnesty was promised. Critically, however, Cristero field commanders were not party to the talks. When fighters laid down arms, many were betrayed and assassinated, deepening a sense of abandonment that still lingers in popular memory.
Among the most revered victims were the canonized and beatified martyrs whose feasts fall on the two commemorative dates. The 25 saints canonized by John Paul II in 2000 include priest-martyrs such as St. Cristóbal Magallanes, shot in 1927 while en route to celebrate Mass, and 14-year-old St. José Sánchez del Río, tortured and executed in 1928 after refusing to renounce his faith (later portrayed in the 2012 film For Greater Glory). The 13 blesseds honored each November 20 include lay leader Blessed Anacleto González Flores, tortured to death in 1927, and the teenage Blessed José Sánchez del Río – wait, no: the boy saint belongs to the earlier group – alongside companions killed in Jalisco and elsewhere.
Their stories – of priests continuing clandestine ministry, of adolescents facing firing squads with the name of Christ on their lips – have nourished Mexican Catholic identity for nearly a century. Ballads known as corridos cristeros still echo in rural cantinas, novels and histories multiply, and the shout “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” remains a rallying cry for many who see the Cristeros not merely as rebels but as defenders of Mexico’s spiritual patrimony inherited from the evangelization of 1531 onward.
Nearly a century later, the Cristero martyrs continue to challenge consciences. For believers, they represent an uncompromising witness that faith cannot be confined to the private sphere when public authority demands its extinction. On this November 20, as bells ring once more in freedom, their blood still speaks – a reminder that religious liberty, once nearly extinguished in Mexico, was purchased at an extraordinarily high price.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Tribune Chretienne
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