Sunday 1 April 2018

# Saints

Saint Anacleto González Flores


The 1st of April is the feast day of Blessed Anacleto González Flores (July 13, 1888 – April 1, 1927). He was a Mexican Catholic layman, a lawyer and a martyr of the faith and was executed during the Church’s persecution under the presidency of Plutarco Elias Calles.

He was the second of twelve children of a poor family in Jalisco, Mexico. The day after his birth, he was baptised and as he was growing up, a priest recommended he enter the seminary. Anacleto studied for sometime in the seminary but then discerned he was not called to be a priest. He married and became an attorney and was an activist for the Catholic faith. He attended mass daily, wrote prolifically and was a dedicated catechism teacher. He joined the Catholic Association of Young Mexicans (ACJM) and started another Catholic lay organisation to help resist the persecution of the Church. Four members of the ACJM were murdered in 1926, after this Anacleto supported the armed resistance movement. He did not take up arms but made speeches encouraging Catholics to support the Cristeros, which was the army fighting against Calles. Anacleto was captured in 1 April 1927 in the Cristero War and was tortured before being martyred by the firing squad.

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