Bl. Miguel Pro

Who they were

Miguel Pro was a Mexican Jesuit, a mining engineer's son and a lifelong practical joker whose letters are genuinely funny, who finished his formation abroad while Mexico's Calles government was closing churches, expelling priests, and making the sacraments a crime. He went home anyway, in 1926, into full persecution.

He spent sixteen months as an underground priest of theatrical brilliance: Masses in safehouses, Communion carried through police lines, showing up dressed as a mechanic, a student, or a police officer, once cycling past the agents sent to arrest him. In November 1927 he was seized, framed for an assassination attempt on a general, and executed by firing squad. The actual perpetrators exonerated him and there was no trial. Calles ordered the execution photographed and published as a deterrent, and it became the opposite. The images of the young priest praying, then standing with arms outstretched in the form of a cross, declaring Viva Cristo Rey, long live Christ the King, went around the world, and tens of thousands lined the streets for the funeral the government had forbidden.

Why people turn to Bl. Miguel Pro

Christians ministering or simply practising under hostility, from actual persecution to the office where faith is a liability. And anyone who needs the reminder that holiness can be witty.

How to ask their intercession

His feast falls days after Christ the King, which is the phrase he died on. Ask his prayers for courage with a light heart, which was his exact combination.