Valencia, Mar 29, 2007 (CNA).- The Holy See is moving ahead with the cause of beatification of Father Felipe Ciscar Puig, a Spanish priest who was martyred during the persecution of 1936 for protecting the seal of confession.
In statements to the AVAN news agency, the vice postulator of the cause, Father Benjamin Agullo, said Father Puig “is considered a martyr of the sacramental seal as he was shot for refusing to reveal the confession of a Franciscan priest who was himself executed.”
Francisco Father Andres Ivars asked to go to confession when he was in prison in August of 1936, suspecting that his execution was near. “At that moment Ciscar was brought to the same prison. After the confession, they tried to get him to reveal the contents and in response to his denial to do so, the militants threatened to kill him,” Father Agullo said.
Since he remained unmoved, his captors organized a mock trial and condemned him to death. Both Father Agullo and Father Ivars were driven by car to another location and were executed on September 8, 1936, the vice postulator of the cause explained.
Father Puig studied at the Seminary of Valencia and was ordained a priest in 1888. After serving as pastor in various parishes, he served as chaplain for the Augustinian Sisters of Denia.
Fathers Ciscar and Ivars are part the cause of canonization of the Servants of God Ricardo Pelufo Esteve and 43 companions, including 36 Franciscans.
5 comments
Father Ciscar is the kind of man who makes the priesthood sound like an attractive option to a young man like me.
I got confused reading the story. I finally realized that they mixed up the names of Fr. Ciscar (the martyr) with Fr. Agullo (the vice postulator) in describing the execution. It would be quite a trick to promote your own beatification 70 years after your own death!
I wonder if the Church will get around to recognizing the numerous Basque priests persecuted by Franco’s regime during the Civil War, because they supported the democratically elected government, instead of Franco’s Nazi backed coup.
Hoodlum, you don’t know anything about the Spanish Civil War do you? The Church at the time protested mistreatment by Nationalist forces of the Basque, including clergy, during the War itself. The Basque supported the Republic in order to gain their independence in order to gain their independence, not because they had any sympathy for what was going on in Republican Spain. During the Revolution that followed immediately after the rising, 12 bishops, 283 nuns, 4,184 priests and 2,365 monks were slaughtered in the Spanish Republic. Churches were burned or converted to warehouses. Freedom of religion did not exist in the Republic outside of the small areas controlled by the Basque in northern Spain. As for the rising of the Nationalists, the Nazis lent assistance after the rising, but it was not caused by the Nazis. People around the world who were opposed to Hitler supported the Nationalists as a lesser evil than the Communist dominated Republic. Winston Churchill was one of these individuals who supported Franco while opposing Hitler. Churchill was correct. In WWII Franco “repaid” Hitler for his assistance by keeping Spain out of the war, in spite of heavy pressure from Hitler to join the Axis and jointly lauch an assault on Gibralter.
… but don’t forget that the Franco regime did not allow religious freedom either, with the lone exception of the Catholic church.