Spain, 1936. The civil war had spread throughout the country and in Valencia it caused religious and priests to disperse, because of the risks they faced there.
The civil uprisings were the result of revolutionary movements that had emerged during the Second Republic, proclaimed in April 1931 – movements loaded with anti-clericalism, despite the fact that the Church had accepted the new government with the intention of collaborating, for love of country. In the years that followed, however, many churches were burned down in Madrid, Malaga and Valencia itself, without any government sanctions.
In the first half of 1936, with the victory of the Popular Front, made up of socialists, communists and other radical groups, the tension increased and the attacks became more serious. More arson was perpetrated in churches and convents, many pastors were expelled from their parishes, countless crosses were torn down and religious ceremonies, including funerals, were banned. This came with threats of greater violence for any failure to accept the political deliberations, which were always enforced illegally by the worst kind of thugs. It was a true religious persecution.
Cowardly execution
Female congregations became the target of special hatred on the part of the revolutionaries. Although in many cases they angelically dedicated themselves to selfless and irreplaceable social work, they were treated as enemies of the people, protectors of the upper classes, “idle women, frustrated mothers and even as covert sinners.”1 They were forced to leave their dwellings and had their property occupied or destroyed after it had been looted.
Among the religious communities in Valencia was that of the Congregation of the Daughters of Mary of the Pious Schools, known as the Escolapias in Spanish. In view of the looming danger, on July 22 the eight Sisters left the congregation’s school where they lived and worked, and took refuge in a small apartment owned by the school’s chauffeur, on the same street.
The following days were difficult and calamitous. Sheltered there, they abandoned themselves into the hands of Divine Providence, with complete confidence that there was a higher divine design in that terrible suffering that had come to visit them. On August 8, a group of militiamen broke into their hiding place at five o’clock in the morning, informing them that a complaint had been filed against them and summoning them to report to the civil government. A car was waiting at the door to carry them away immediately.
Anticlerical uprisings spread throughout Spain, burning churches, tearing down crosses, and persecuting priests and religious
However, not all of them fit in the car. The revolutionaries demanded that only five board and the others wait for the next vehicle. With determination and courage, like vigilant virgins with their lamps lit, seeming to sense that their meeting with the Divine Bridegroom was at hand, Mother Maria Baldillou of the Child Jesus, Mother Maria Luisa of Jesus, Mother Carmen of St. Philip Neri and Mother Clemence of St. John the Baptist came forward, confronting the red fury. After some indecision on the part of the others, Mother Presentation of the Holy Family also stepped forward.
Once in the vehicle the militiamen did not take them to any government court or trial; rather they were underhandedly taken to El Saler Beach where they were shot. News of the cowardly murder spread the next day, but it was not until several days later that it became official, when photographs of the victims were displayed in the government courtroom, after they had already been buried.
Divine design: continuation of the congregation
Meanwhile, the other three nuns remained at the apartment: Mother Loreto Turull, Mother Dolores Vidal and Mother Dolores Mateo. Before long, the car that was supposed to take them to the civil government arrived. As they climbed into the vehicle, they found a priest, Fr. Manuel Escorihuela Simeon, already inside. On the way, they realized that a diversion had been made; they too were on the road to El Saler…
However, God had other plans for those religious. The car came to a halt on the highway, due to a breakdown or lack of fuel (it is not certain which), and they were unable to continue. A transfer was made to another smaller vehicle with some higher-ranking militiamen, and this completely changed the fate of the detainees.
Discovered by the revolutionaries in their apartment refuge, five Escolapia nuns were taken to El Saler beach, where they were shot
They were taken to the committee, located in the cemetery, and then to the civil government. Once they had given the required statements and were released, the three nuns received safe-conduct that allowed them to flee to Barcelona.
Mother Loreto Turull stated in the general cause for the beatification of her martyred sisters that one of the militiamen, Amador Sauquillo, the authority who saved their lives, asked them to help him “if things changed.”2 However, after fleeing Valencia, they never heard from him again. The Divine Saviour wanted to spare the lives of His virginal brides, so that they could be witnesses to all these events and give continuity to the congregation. Mother Loreto was later chosen the provincial superior and, after the storm abated, the Escolapias resumed their evangelization and recovered the college in Valencia, which is still in full operation today.
An innocent and maternal soul
What can we say about these steeled souls, brave virgins who did not hesitate to seal their surrender to God with their blood, receiving the palm of martyrdom as their prize? Little is known of their lives. And they would have been almost anonymous to human eyes if they had remained behind the sacred walls of the college, dedicating themselves to the fulfilment of their vocation.
However, their final act of supreme and heroic charity highlighted the virtue they already practised in the simplicity of everyday life, because, as the Latin saying goes, “talis vita finis ita.” In this sense, one of them stands out in particular: Mother Carmen of St. Philip Neri.
In Eulz, a hamlet in the Estella ward of Navarre, on July 27, 1869, she was born to honourable peasant parents who, through hard work and effort, had risen to the status of small landowners. Staunch Catholics, as was still typical in 19th century Spain, they baptized their second daughter the day after she was born in the charming little parish church dedicated to St. Sebastian and situated on top of the village hill, giving her the name Nazaria Gómez Lezaun. Very lively from an early age, she and her sisters, Leona and Magdalena, received a profound Catholic education at home, in the village’s public school and in parish life.
Perhaps owing to the name she received at the baptismal font, the hidden life of the Holy Family of Nazareth deeply attracted Nazaria. One day at school, she came across a classmate who was crying in one of the classrooms because she missed her family. To console her, Nazaria reminded her of the longing that the Child Jesus had felt when He left His parents to debate with the doctors of the Law in the Temple in Jerusalem, far from the affection and support of Mary and Joseph. He, God, who had suffered so much more, was going to help heal her sorrows. The child gradually calmed down and returned happily to her school activities. This was a paradigmatic episode of the path her life would take: it was her vocation as an educator, full of maternal spirit, germinating in her little heart.
During her teenage years, as an active member of the Confraternity of the Daughters of Mary, she developed a tender devotion to the Virgin of Puy de Estella, whose shrine she visited frequently. Her spiritual relationship with Our Lady preserved her innocence and filled her soul with an ardent love for Jesus and Mary, prompting her resolution to become a religious.
The Pious Schools: a path to sanctification
Her devoted love for the Blessed Virgin filled her with enchantment for Mary’s supernatural motherhood, and the maturing of her call to religious life led her to choose the female congregation of the Pious Schools, dedicated to the education of girls and young women. Its foundress, St. Paula Montal, was inspired by the charism and educational system of St. Joseph Calasanz.
The martyrdom of the Escolapias highlighted the virtue they already practised in everyday life, such as in the case of Madre Carmen
At the age of twenty-four, she entered the novitiate in Carabanchel, a district of Madrid, and received the habit on the day of Our Lady’s Nativity, September 8, 1893, taking the name Sister Carmen of St. Philip Neri, which united the oldest Marian invocation – that of Carmel– with the Saint of joy. Of a determined temperament, she carried all her resolutions through to the end, with a deep spirit of purpose and commitment. Thus she spent her two preparatory years as a novice, at the end of which she professed her religious vows on the second anniversary of taking the habit. The following November she was assigned to the college in Valencia, her only home in the congregation.
Mother Carmen began her apostolate as a helper in the domestic chores, then went on to become the doorkeeper, an office that allowed her to put into practice her natural inclination to be an educator and the maternal gift she had received from the Mother of God, since there she could show her charity to all those in need who came to her: the poor, parents, former pupils, staff or others who came to the school for any reason. “She was affable and smiling, and turned that noisy college gate, with its constant coming and going of pupils and family members, into a Bethany where the Lord reposed.”3
A premonition of religious persecution
Humble and firm, she stood out for the intense supernatural aura of her conversations and recommendations, inspirations from the Holy Spirit drawn from her constant spirit of prayer. Everyone was attracted by the “wisdom of God that they heard from her lips. As a result, they sought her out to tell her their troubles and confide to her their sorrows; they found solace in her good heart and succour in her admirably prudent advice, since she possessed great intuition in the knowledge of people. […] A friendship and apostolate that lasted even when, due to life’s circumstances, they moved to other cities.”4
Her forty-one years of dedicated religious life, in the simplicity of righteousness and virtue, could not have led her to adopt a different attitude from the heroism she displayed in the face of persecution. Pope John Paul II’s words about several of the martyrs of the civil war can well be applied to her: “Many of them in life had already enjoyed a reputation for holiness among their countrymen. It could be said that their exemplary conduct prepared them in a way for the supreme confession of Faith that is martyrdom.”5
As she learned of all the political events unfolding in Spain, starting in 1931 with the Second Republic, Mother Carmen discerned the seriousness of the situation, which would get even worse, with a premonition of the overwhelming persecution that would befall the Church and, of course, them as religious educators. With the victory of the Popular Front in the spring of 1936, she was certain that danger was imminent. An ordeal loomed before her and she did not hesitate to say “yes” to the whole sacrifice.
She was not mistaken, as was seen at the beginning of this article. For their holocaust, she and her Escolapia sisters received the honour of being part of the first beatification ceremony of the third millennium.
From the 20th to the 21st century
Today, looking back at the early years of the 20th century, the facts reveal that Spain “unleashed the greatest religious persecution known in history since the time of the Roman Empire, even greater than the French Revolution.”6 By the end of the war, the number of martyrs totalled almost ten thousand.
In face of the looming persecution against the Church and its members, she did not hesitate to say “yes” to the complete sacrifice of herself
At the time, Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira commented: “What is being disputed in Spain is whether the world should be governed by Jesus Christ or by Karl Marx. The whole of Catholic civilization, all the principles of morality, all the traditions, all the institutions of which Westerners are proud will disappear irretrievably if communism wins. The Church’s fight against the soviets is God’s fight against the devil, the fight of everything noble against everything ignoble, of everything good against everything evil. In view of this, one wonders: is not the great quantity of blood that is being shed in Spain well spent, if the outpouring of this blood of martyrs results in the victory of civilization over barbarism?”7
Over two decades into the 21st century, are we not still witnessing Christians being persecuted and murdered, and the Church being trampled underfoot? Has the blood of so many innocent victims been shed in vain over all this time? It cries out to Heaven for an end to the barbarity that has only increased after almost a century of these events. And Heaven will not remain deaf to such a cry! The moment of Christ’s victory cannot come soon enough, brought to fruition as it has been by so much blood, and the Divine Saviour’s promise is eternal: “The gates of hell shall not prevail” (Mt 16:18)! ◊
Notes
1 RODRÍGUEZ FERNÁNDEZ, Gregorio. El hábito y la cruz. Religiosas asesinadas en la Guerra Civil Española. Madrid: Edibesa, 2006, p.327.
2 Idem, p.336.
3 DECRETUM SUPER MARTYRIUM apud RODRÍGUEZ FERNÁNDEZ, op. cit., p.338.
4 LABARTA ARAGUÁS, SChP, María Luisa. Madre Carmen Gómez y Lezaun (1869-1936): amar y servir. Roma: Instituto de Hijas de María, Religiosas de las Escuelas Pías, 2001, p.30.
5 ST. JOHN PAUL II. Homily for the Beatification of José Aparicio Sanz and 232 Companions Martyrs in Spain, 11/3/2001, n.2.
6 OFFICE OF PAPAL LITURGICAL CELEBRATIONS OF THE HOLY FATHER. Capilla papal presidida por el Santo Padre Juan Pablo II para la beatificación de los Siervos de Dios José Aparicio Sanz y 232 compañeros mártires.
7 CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Reflexões em torno da Revolução Espanhola [Reflections on the Spanish Revolution]. In: Legionário. São Paulo. Year X. N.224 (Dec. 27, 1936); p.2.
