Anyone who saw the 2012 film For Greater Glory will recall the brutal, bloody martyrdom scene of a teenager in 1920s Mexico. That was a true story, and that teenager, José Luis Sánchez del Río, is on the way to being canonized.
Pope Francis on Thursday approved several decrees presented to him from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, including a miracle attributed to Blessed José, a young member of the Cristero movement that fought for religious freedom when Mexico’s government was severely restricting the activities of the Catholic Church.
In the film version of his story, Blessed José, played by Mauricio Kuri, is seen as constantly repeating the Cristero cry, “Viva Cristo Rey!” or “Long Live Christ the King.” That’s the same phrase Blessed Miguel Pro and others shouted as they were killed by Mexican government officials.
Pope Benedict XVI beatified him in 2005. The Vatican website has this for Blessed José’s biography:
José Sánchez del Río was born on 28 March 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. 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.”
On 5 February 1928 the young boy was captured during a battle and imprisoned in the church sacristy. In order to terrorize him, soldiers made him 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 attempted to ransom his son, but was unable to raise the money in time.On 10 February 1928 the teenager was brutally tortured and the skin of the soles of his feet was sheered off; he was then forced 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. The 14 year old shouted out: “Long live Christ the King!” and was summarily shot.
It wasn’t announced whether Pope Francis would canonize Blessed José when he makes his first visit to Mexico next month.
The new feature film “For Greater Glory” tells the story of the Mexican Cristero war, which broke out in the 1920’s when the secularist government, under the leadership of President Plutarco Elias Calles, decided to enforce the strict anti-clerical laws embedded in the Mexican constitution of 1917. All religious ceremonies – Masses, baptisms, confirmations, weddings, etc. – were banned, bishops were forced to leave the country, and priests were forbidden to wear clerical garb in public. Priests who resisted were imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases, killed outright. One of the most affective scenes in the film is the execution of Padre Christopher, an old priest played by the great Peter O’Toole. As the federales arrived in his small town, the priest refused to hide or flee. Instead, he sat quietly in his church, robed in Mass vestments, and accepted his fate as an act of witness. Others also resolved to resist through nonviolent means, most notably Anacleto Gonzalez Flores (played by Eduardo Verastegui), a magazine editor and activist, who rallied Mexican youth through his speeches and writings.
But given the intensity and violence of the attack on Catholicism – which Graham Greene called the most thorough persecution of a religion since the time of Elizabeth I – it was practically inevitable that an armed resistance would emerge. The bulk of “For Greater Glory” concerns this “Cristero” rebellion, which began with small and disorganized bands of guerilla fighters, but grew, under the leadership of General Enrique Gorostieta (Andy Garcia), into an efficient military operation. The emotional heart of the film is the relationship between the General and a 14-year-old boy named Jose, who had been a friend of Padre Christopher and witnessed the priest’s murder. Despite his youth, Jose joined the Cristero army, serving as standard-bearer and aide-de-camp to Gorostieta. In the course of a particularly brutal battle, Jose was captured by the federales, who then tortured him mercilessly, hoping to compel him to renounce the ideals of the Cristeros and accept the decisions of the government. Even in the face of this horrendous attack, Jose refused to give in, stubbornly repeating the motto of the resistance: Viva el Cristo Rey! (Long live Christ the King).
I won't give away any more of the story, but I would like to reflect on that motto, which is heard throughout the film on the lips of dozens of characters. Viva Cristo Rey! is the hinge on which this entire Cristero episode turns and is, indeed, the central teaching of the New Testament. The great Scriptural scholar N.T. Wright has argued that the four Gospels are fundamentally the story of how Yahweh, the God of Israel, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, established himself as king. On the Biblical reading, the world had long been governed by various “kings” who ruled through violence and cruelty: Pharaoh, the Amalekites, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. But Yahweh had promised that one day, through his anointed servant, he would deal with these tyrants, and would himself come to shepherd and to reign. It is of enormous significance that when Jesus first appeared as a preacher in the hills of Galilee, his theme was “the kingdom of God is at hand!” In other words, in his own person; an entirely new way of ordering things is on offer. Then, in his love and non-violence, in his open-table fellowship, in his outreach to prostitutes and tax collectors, in his mocking of the Pharisees and religious establishment, in his healing and teaching, Jesus was demonstrating precisely what the reign of the God of Israel looks like.
This way of life inevitably awakened the opposition of the powers that be. At the climax of his ministry, Jesus faced down the resistance of “the world,” to use the typical New Testament term, meaning that whole congeries of cruelty, betrayal, denial, violence, corruption, and hatred by which human affairs are typically ordered. He permitted all of that darkness to wash over him, to crush him and snuff him out. But then, on the third day, he rose again from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit and thereby outflanked, out-maneuvered and swallowed up the darkness. In a delicious irony, it was Pontius Pilate who anticipated the significance of this victory over the cross of Jesus, the Roman governor had placed a sign written in the three great languages of that time and place, which read “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” In the light of the resurrection, the first Christians knew that, in Jesus, the God of Israel had become king, and that the world was now under new management. They saw their mission as the declaration of that kingship to everyone. This did not imply at all that they were advocating “theocracy” in the crude sense. (Indeed, both Peter and Paul urge their readers to show deference to the properly instituted Roman authority.) But they were insisting that Jesus is the one to whom final allegiance is due and that he is more powerful than any of the “kings,” – political, economic, military or cultural who tend to dominate human affairs. They reveled in the fact that Jesus’ kingly power was exercised, not through violence and domination, but through the non-violence of the cross. They gladly announced to anyone who would listen that the true king wore a crown of thorns and reigned from a throne that was a Roman instrument of torture.
At the very close of “For Greater Glory,” we see a listing of those figures from the film that the Catholic Church beatified or canonized as saints. Without exception, they were those who chose the path of non-violent resistance. As I said, I certainly understand why an armed rebellion sprang up in the Mexico of that time, and I wouldn't dream of questioning the motives of those who participated in it. But I would indeed say that those who advocate the kingship of Jesus should fight the way he did: invading the darkness by light and swallowing up hatred through love. Viva Cristo Rey!
Most Americans haven’t the foggiest idea that a quasi-Stalinist, violently anti-Catholic regime once existed on our southern borders. But those who don’t know how bad Mexico was in the late 1920s are about to learn, at least those who see For Greater Glory, a recently-released movie about the Cristero War, a passionate (and bloody) defense of Catholicism that’s remembered today, if at all, because of Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory.
There’s been a strange silence about all this for almost a century. Even Catholics aware of the extent of 20th century martyrdom seem to have little sense of the modern Mexican martyrs—although the addition of the memorial of St. Christopher Magallanes and Companions to the universal liturgical calendar (May 21) ought to remind North American Catholics just what was going on south of the Rio Grande during the years when the brutal government of Plutarco Elias Calles tried to destroy the Catholic Church in Mexico. It was a terrible time, and the example of the Cristeros, who included both underground priests like Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J. (perhaps the first martyr in two millennia to be photographed at the moment of his death) and fighters like General Enrique Gorostieta (well-played by Academy Award nominee Andy Garcia in the new film) ought to inspire 21st-century Catholics to stand firm in defense of religious freedom.
For Greater Glory takes some artistic liberties with history; the martyrdom of Christopher Magallanes, for example, happened in somewhat different circumstances than those described in the film. But taken as a whole, the movie conveys both the hard truth about the Calles regime and the often noble, but sometimes conflicted, story of Calles’s Cristero opponents.
The most moving subplot in the movie involves Jose Luis Sanchez de Rio, a teenager converted to serious Catholicism by Christopher Magallanes (as the film tells it) and “adopted,” in spirit, by General Gorostieta when the lad asks to join the Cristeros. Whatever the artistic license taken with the details of these relationships, it will be a hard heart indeed that is not moved by the depiction of the boy’s martyrdom, as he defies torture and blandishments, all intended to get him to apostasize, and cries “Viva Cristo Rey!” just before the bullets strike him down.
Jose Luis Sanchez del Rio was beatified on Nov. 20, 2005; his liturgical commemoration (Feb. 10, the day of his death) should shape the rhythm of liturgical life in U.S. parishes, like those of St. Christopher Magallanes and Bl. Miguel Pro (Nov. 23).
In his Chrism Mass homily in April, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington urged his priests and seminarians to see For Greater Glory. Cardinal Wuerl is not given to dramatic gestures; his suggestion that the film might help form the self-understanding of Washington’s priests and future priests was all the more powerful for that. Barack Obama is not Plutarco Elias Calles, and the United States in 2012 is not Mexico in 1926-29. But anyone who doubts that there are grave threats to religious freedom in North America today has only to consider the HHS “contraceptive mandate,” the administration’s refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the administration’s efforts to void the “ministerial exemption” in U.S. employment law, and the bad habit of Canadian human rights “tribunals” to levy serious financial penalties against Christian ministers who preach biblical truth.
Threats to religious freedom come in many forms—some hard, like during the Cristero War; some softer, if no less lethal to the first freedom. One way to blunt the hard threats is to stand firmly against the softer threats and to name those threats for what they are. For Greater Glory will inspire and encourage those already committed to defending religious freedom today. It is even more important, though, that those who haven’t yet seen the threat, or who deny that it exists, ponder this powerful depiction of the nearby and not-so-distant past, for the sake of the present and future.
On June 1 the movie "For Greater Glory" will hit the theaters in the USA. Go see this movie! It tells the history of the persecution of the faith of the people of Mexico by their government. A secondary story is the heroic witness of José Luis Sanchez Del Rio, a 14 year old hero and martyr! We need to get the word out about this film! The following comes from the Black Cordelias site:
José Luis Sanchez Del Rio was born in Sahuayo, Michoacan (Mexico), March 28 1913 by parents Macario Sánchez, María del Río. Visiting the tomb of the blessed martyr Anacleto González Flores, he asked God to die in defense of the faith. Just fourteen, José Luis was murdered February 10, 1928, during the religious persecution in Mexico, as belonging to the Cristeros, a large Catholic group that was opposed to the oppression of President Plutarco Elías Calles regime.
One year before the martyrdom of José Luis, he had joined the Cristeras of General Prudencio Mendoza, whose base was at the village of Cotija. The tragic event attended by two children, respectively, seven and nine years, which in future would religious congregations. One of them was Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, born in Cotija, which in the interview-book “Mi Vida es Cristo” ( “My life is Christ”) revealed the decisive role for his vocation was witnessing the death of martyred little friend. “He was arrested by the forces of government, which wanted to give an exemplary punishment on the civilian population that supported the Cristeros” said the founder who was just seven years old at the time. “They asked him to renounce his faith in Christ under the threat of the death penalty. José did not accept apostasy. His mother was torn from the penalty and by anxiety, but his son said. Then they peeled the soles of the feet and the obligation to walk in the country, on the road to the cemetery. He cried and moaned in pain, but not sold. From time to time he stopped and said: If you shout, ‘Christ the King dies’ it will save lives. Tell them ‘Christ the King will die’. But he replied: ‘Long live Christ the King’. Reaching the cemetery, before he was shot, they asked him for the last time if he wanted to deny his faith. And he did not so they killed him right there. He died then by shouting, like many other Mexican martyrs: ‘Christ the King lives!’. These are indelible images from my memory and the memory of the Mexican people, although there is no mention of them in official history. “
The other eyewitness was a child of nine years, Enrique Amezcua Medina, who later founded the Priestly Confraternity of Workers of the Kingdom of Christ, now present in both houses of formation in Mexico, Spain and several other countries around the world. In the biography of the Brotherhood he founded, Father Amezcua remembered his providential meeting with José Luis Sanchez Del Rio. As stated in that testimony, he knew the child martyr which proved decisive for his choice of priests. He then created the “Seminary of Christ the King” on Salvatierra for the Training of Workers, whose internship was dedicated to “José Luis”. The mortal remains of José Luis Sanchez Del Rio, still resting in the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in his hometown, became a pilgrimage site.
The martyrdom of the victims of religious persecution caused by the new Mexican Constitution of 1917, was approved on June 22, 2004 by Pope John Paul II and he was beatified on November 20, 2005, under Pope Benedict XVI, with the ceremony presided by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Cardinal José Saraiva Martins in Guadalajara in Mexico.
Welcome to the Blog! I am a Catholic Priest and was ordained to the priesthood on August 26, 2000. I hope this site is a place of interest for you where you will find ideas and information on the Catholic faith and the Church.
