On this date in 1927, Catholic padre Mateo Correa Magallanes was martyred during Mexico’s brutal Cristero war.
We’ve previously noted the bloody 1926-1929 rebellion of Catholics in central and western Mexico against the liberal and secular state that had emerged from the previous decade’s Mexican Revolution.
Imprisoned as a Cristero sympathizer during this conflict, Correa (English Wikipedia entry | Spanish) administered the church’s sacrament of confession to some fellow-prisoners.
When the nearest general caught wind of this event, he immediately demanded of the priest the details those comrades revealed in the rite. Correa positively refused: the inviolable seal of the confessional being a principle that Romish clergy have bravely died for down the ages.
Correa joined their number by refusing every threat and blandishment to break his silence. He was shot in a cemetery outside Durango on the morning of February 6, 1927.
On this day..
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- 1967: Sunny Ang, a murderer without a body
- 1557: Martin Bucer and Paulus Phagius, already in their coffins
- 1528: Ambrosius Spittelmayr
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- 1481: Diego Suson, by his daughter's hand
- 1997: Michael Carl George
- 1839: Amos Perley and Joshua Doane, for the Upper Canada Rebellion
- 1821: Owen Coffin, main course
- 1885: George Gibson and Wayne Powers
- 1945: Robert Brasillach, intellectual traitor
- 1615: Patrick Stewart, 2nd Earl of Orkney