Mexican Martyrdom: Firsthand Accounts of the Religious Persecution in Mexico 1926-1935

MEXICAN MARTYRDOM is a series of true stories of the terrible anti-Catholic persecutions which took place in Mexico in the 1920's. Told by the Jesuit priest, Fr. Wilfrid Parsons, these stories are based upon cases he had seen himself or that had been described to him personally by Mexican people who had undergone the atrocities of those times. Amazing to contemporary readers will be the fact that a full-fledged, purposeful persecution of the Church, complete with martyrdom for several thousand people and some 50 Catholic priests, took place in our very century and just south of our own border. It was during this time that the famous Jesuit priest, Fr. Miguel Pro, was martyred before a firing squad. From the conquest of Mexico by Cortes and his Spanish soldiers in 1521 to the Mexican Independence from Spain in 1821, exactly 300 years elapsed, and during those 300 years Spain brought European culture to Mexico and created in that country a great Catholic civilization-to rival that of any nation in Europe. However, when the Great Mexican Revolution began in 1810, this flourishing country began to wither and die. That Revolution was not the end until 1928 with the end of the brutal rule of "President" Plutarco Elias Calles. (And even then it was not really finished, but continues to this day.)