“Viva Cristo Rey”

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or all of his daring exploits -- dodging hostile government agents by leaping from moving taxi cabs, or by disguising himself as a grocer or a mechanic -- the young Jesuit Miguel Pro was not a well man. The communistic Calles administration of early twentieth-century Mexico had made the practice of the Catholic Faith illegal, and Father Pro had to battle both its repressive measures and his own poor health. His trip to Lourdes left him reflecting, “I was at the feet of my Mother and . . . I felt very deeply within myself Her blessed presence and action,” but he was not fully, physically healed as so many others have been. The only physical healing he would receive had come many years earlier, when his father had lifted toddler Miguel up to Our Lady of Guadalupe with the wrenching plea, “Mother, give me back my son!” Immediately the unconscious child, on whom the doctors had given up, shuddered, opened his eyes, brought up whatever had been poisoning him, and embarked upon what everyone hoped would be a full recovery.

But it was not to be. Ordained in his thirties on August 31, 1925 in Belgium, Father Pro was still having serious stomach trouble which interfered with his studies and his ability to minister as a priest. In fact, when his superiors sent him home to Mexico, they did so with the thought that they might as well let the gifted young man live out his last difficult days near his family and among his own people.

That was not the attitude Miguel himself took. “For his part,” writes his biographer of happy memory, Ann Ball, “Father Pro

believed that it was his mission to spend the rest of his life bringing Christ to his countrymen, without counting the cost or worrying about the danger.”

And the danger was considerable. The Calles laws not only sparked the Cristeros movement depicted in the popular movie For Greater Glory; they formed the horrific backdrop against which Father Pro fed, both spiritually and physically, his flock in hiding. Falsely accused of conspiring in an assassination plot, Father Pro was executed by firing squad on November 23, 1927. His last words – inscribed on the halo in his portrait in the Shrine Church – were “Viva Cristo Rey”– Long Live Christ the King!

On September 23, 2012, Father Jacinto M. Chapin, F.I., current Rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, installed a first-class relic of the beatified martyr in the side-aisle altar where this portrait hangs. The cultural context of this installation is sobering: in our own country, laws forbidding the public practice of certain aspects of the Catholic Faith have now gone into effect as well. May we hold Blessed Miguel Pro’s heroic example in our hearts, invoking his certain intercession unceasingly during the darkening days to come, and praying with him in the words he composed shortly before his death: Heart of Jesus, I am all Thine, but take care of my promise so that I may be able to put it into practice even unto the complete sacrifice of my life. •

ABOVE Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, S.J. painting at one of the side-aisle shrines in the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Artist: Nielson Carlin. A relic of Blessed Miguel is in the bottom portion of the side-aisle shrine.

BELOW Detail of Blessed Miguel Pro’s first- class relic located in the Shrine church.

Written by Helen Weir, M.I.

Helen Weir is a freelance writer based in western Wisconsin. She is a member of the Militia Immaculatae movement of Marian consecration founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe and is a frequent pilgrim to the Shrine.

Ann Ball’s book Blessed Miguel Pro: 20th Century Mexican Martyr (Rockford: TAN, 1996) is available at the Flores Mariae Gift Shop.

Miguel Pro

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© 2013. Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the Spring 2013 Tepeyac newsletter. Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Crosse, Wisconsin. www.guadalupeshrine.org