| Saint Rafael Guízar Valencia | |
|---|---|
Rafael Guízar Valencia |
|
| Born | April 26, 1878 Cotija, Michoacán |
| Died | June 6, 1938 Mexico City |
| Honored in | Roman Catholicism |
| Beatified | January 29, 1995 by John Paul II |
| Canonized | October 15, 2006, Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI |
| Feast | June 6 |
Saint Rafael Guízar Valencia[1] (April 26, 1878 – June 6, 1938) was a Catholic bishop who cared for the wounded, sick, and dying in Mexico's 1910-20 Revolution. Named bishop of Veracruz[2], he was driven out of his home diocese and forced to live the remainder of his life in hiding in Mexico City. He was also a Knight of Columbus. Controversially, he was an uncle of Marcial Maciel.
Guizar's body was exhumed in 1950, twelve years after his death, and witnesses have said it had not decayed, except for the left eye, which he was said to have offered up for a sinner during his lifetime.
Pope Benedict XVI recognised Bishop Guízar as a saint on October 15, 2006.
Six other Knights, all of whom were martyred in Mexico during the persecutions of the 1920s and 1930s, were declared saints of the Catholic Church by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
“We welcome the canonization of our brother Knight, Bishop Guízar Valencia, and know that his life of courage and legacy of evangelization will be an inspiration to each of our 1.7 million members around the world,” said Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson, who attended Bishop Guízar’s canonization in Rome.
Rafael Guízar Valencia was born in Cotija de la Paz, Michoacán, on April 26, 1878 (his brother, Antonio Guízar y Valencia[3] (1879–1971), served as the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Chihuahua for 49 years). He was ordained a priest in 1901. With the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, persecution of the Catholic Church became severe, and Guízar became a special target because of his outspoken defense of the Church.
He went underground—disguised as a junk dealer—to continue his work as a priest. In 1915, when the government ordered that he be shot on sight, he escaped to the United States, and then went on to serve the Church in Guatemala and Cuba.
While in Cuba, Guizar was consecrated as bishop of Veracruz. The end of the Revolution enabled him to return to Mexico in January 1920, and he joined Knights of Columbus Council 2311 in Xalapa, Veracruz, on August 16, 1923.
As bishop, he founded a clandestine seminary to train future priests, noting that “A bishop can do without a mitre, a crosier, and even a cathedral, but never without a seminary, because the future of his diocese depends on the seminary.”
Bishop Guízar was forced to flee Mexico once again in 1927 during the persecution of the Church under President Plutarco Elías Calles. He returned in 1929, the year the Church reached an accord with the government after the end of the Cristero War, in part because of successful lobbying by the Knights of Columbus to get the U.S. government to take an active role in solving the crisis.
After his return to Mexico, Guízar continued his ministry, and became known as “the bishop of the poor.” He died on June 6, 1938. According to investigative journalist Jason Berry and former Hartford Courant religion writer Gerald Renner:
The day before Bishop Guizar died, he had been heard shouting angrily at his eighteen-year-old nephew, Marcial Maciel. He was giving Maciel a dressing-down after two women had come to the bishop's house to complain about Maciel, who was their neighbor. Father Orozco, who was among the original group of boys to found the Legion of Christ in 1941, said he heard the women had complained about the "noise" Maciel was making with children he had brought into his home to teach religion. He said that the seminary officials blamed Maciel for his uncle's heart attack and subsequent death. (Berry & Renner, Vows of Silence, Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York: 2004, p. 155)
The incident would take on new significance decades after Guízar's death, when Pope Benedict XVI ordered Fr Maciel to retire to a life of prayer and penance after a papal commission completed its investigation into his sexual misconduct with Legion seminarians who were minors at the time [4] (Maciel was also discovered, in 2009, to have fathered at least one illegitimate child while under the vow of chastity)[5].
Bishop Guízar was beatified by Pope John Paul II on January 29, 1995 and Canonised on October 15, 2006 by Pope Benedict.