A parish priest who took the place of a father to be executed, a widow who opened a soup kitchen for the poor, a disabled man, a priest who was ordained just 10 days before his execution ... Another 124 martyrs of the 20th-century religious persecution in Spain will be beatified this Saturday in Jaén.
They weren’t superheroes, nor did they have ideal lives, but they knew how to give the greatest sacrifice for the One who had first given His life for them.
This was highlighted by the Bishop of Jaén, Sebastián Chico Martínez, ahead of the celebration on December 13, 2025.
The prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, presided over the beatification in the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Andalusian city.
These 124 martyrs join a large group (thousands) of blesseds who were killed during the religious persecution of the 20th century in Spain. A handful have already been canonized. For the most part, they have been beatified in groups by the last several popes. Many more causes are still under way.
“The Spanish Kolbe”
Among the new martyrs is Father Francisco de Paula Padilla. Some call him “the Spanish Kolbe.”
Francisco de Paula was 44 years old and parish priest of the municipality of Arjona in Jaén when he gave his life, explains Rafael Higueras, postulator of his cause, to Aleteia.
On the night of April 3, 1937, while in the cathedral of Jaén, which had been converted into a prison, the priest saw a fellow prisoner crying.
It was José, a father of six, who had been placed on a list that everyone knew would end in execution.
The priest then asked the militiamen to let him go in José’s place. And so he gave himself up to death, as Maximilian Kolbe did in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
A widow devoted to the poor
Obdulia Puchol Merino inherited her Catholic faith and commitment to the Church from her parents.
An active collaborator in her parish, she intensified her apostolic and charitable works after the death of her husband. She worked with the St. Vincent de Paul Society at her parish, which her father had organized and then presided over.
Obdulia created a residence for transients where she provided food, lodging, and health services to those in need.
On the day of her martyrdom, she was wearing the habit of St. Francis, as a secular Franciscan tertiary.
Witnesses
Among the martyrs of this new group being beatified are a priest martyred 10 days after being ordained and a person with mental disabilities known as “Bernabé, el de los majitos” (Barnabas, the one with the little ones).
There are also two young people from Catholic Action, a religious sister, the bishop's sister and her husband, numerous priests, and some lay people.
For Bishop Chico Martínez, “remembering them is not looking back at the past with sadness, but embracing the future with courage [...] because their martyrdom shines above the shadows of history and the fragility of the world.”
And in the words of the bishop emeritus of Jaén, Ramón del Hoyo, in the three days leading up to the beatification their example inspires us to “find peace with ourselves and with our lives in order to face death.”
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