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Inspiring Christian Lives
Miguel Pro, 1891-1927
Mexico 1927:
A 21 year old Mexican priest, Miguel Pro is marched out to face a government firing squad. The communist government that ordered the shooting has alerted news cameras to the event. They hope to score a major propaganda victory by recording the priest pleading for mercy from the communist government. Instead of wavering, Pro walks out to the execution bravely, asking only to be allowed to pray before dying. After his prayers, he stands up, extends his arms in the form of a cross, a traditional Mexican way of praying, and with a steady voice intones: "Viva Cristo Rey", "Long Live Christ the King". The bullets of the government firing squad rip through him.
The man who ordered his death was the then President of Mexico, Plutarco Elias Calles. Calles nurtured a deep hatred of religion and the Catholic Church in particular. He associated it with everything negative and oppressive in Mexico's history, and was determined to wipe it off the face of his part of the earth, Mexico. To this end, he was part of a movement that banned religious education, banned religious orders, confined expressions of belief to churches alone and restricted the property the church could hold.
He was on a communist mission to destroy religion in Mexico. Within weeks of taking power he had confiscated religious property and turned them into museums of atheism. Here, priests were mocked and religion was trivialised. One of his sidekicks in this enterprise was Canabal: he had gone as far as naming his children Lenin, Lucifer and Satan to show his contempt for religion. Of course, Miguel Pro and many of the people of Mexico refused to conform to these demands. As a result, the lives of Pro and Calles collided. The spark came when, amidst persecutions, some of the Catholics had taken up arms of resistance.
Pro was not one of the armed resistors, but the government made sure that he was framed for a bomb that went off blowing up government officials. One of Pro's closest Christian friends was soon to be shot at the hands of the firing squads. In March 1927, Father Nieves had been on the run, hiding from government forces out to shoot every priest. He came out of hiding after the captain of the government forces threatened to torture the villagers if they did not reveal the priest's whereabouts. Two peasants who had hidden him refused to abandon him. They were executed. Before he followed them, one of the hunted priests, Nieves, gestured to the soldiers who were out to kill them to come over: "Kneel down", he said, "and I will give you the blessing of a priest - and along with it my pardon for what you are about to do". Remarkably, the soldiers all knelt and made the sign of the cross. Then, Nieves turned to the captain and remarked: "Even for you there is a blessing and my pardon". This so infuriated the officer, that he drew his pistol and shot him on the spot.
In the next few years the government killed some 200-350,000 Catholics. And what became of Calles, the hater of religion? He retired, travelled Europe, became an admirer of Hitler and ended up trying to contact the dead through spiritualists and mediums.
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