It is never easy to look back at the painful bits of your country’s past, particularly where it complicates the simplistic assessment we each try to live with as to what was right and what was wrong. But there is no doubt that during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), nearly 7,000 Catholic priests, monks, nuns, and thousands of laypeople were executed by leftist Republican forces, because the Catholic Church was widely regarded as a powerful, regressive political force allied with the conservative elite, the monarchy, and Franco’s Nationalist rebels.
A new book, by Spanish priest and theologian Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca Alameda, featured in catholic website, EWTN News, tells the stories of Catholics who suffered persecution during the civil war.
Written in Spanish and published under the title “Los mártires que no fueron. Salvados, clandestinos, refugiados, evadidos y muertos de la persecución religiosa en España (1936–1939)” (“The Martyrs Who Were Not: Survivors, Underground Catholics, Refugees, Escapees and Victims of Religious Persecution in Spain, 1936–1939”), the book “recounts the experiences of people who escaped death, lived in hiding, fled dangerous areas, or died during the Spanish Civil War under circumstances that did not meet the Church’s criteria for martyrdom.”
These are mainly people who escaped death through unexpected circumstances or hidden for years while sustaining a Church forced underground. Some fled the most dangerous areas, while others died during the war without their deaths being recognised as martyrdom. “Not all saints who live through a religious persecution attain the palm of martyrdom by dying in it”, says author, Monsignor Sánchez de Toca, “and not everyone who dies during a persecution is a martyr”.
Read this disturbing and moving article in EWTN News here. Find the book on Amazon here.