On 13 October, the Vincentian Family celebrates the memory of missionaries who, in different times and places, gave their lives for Christ and for the poor. Their stories – different in circumstances but united by the same Spirit – are a single hymn of fidelity, charity and forgiveness.
Bishop François-Xavier Schraven, CM, a Dutch bishop, and his eight companions were killed in 1937 in Tcheng-Ting-Fu, China. During the Sino-Japanese War, they had opened the doors of their mission to hundreds of refugee women and girls who were threatened by the violence of soldiers. When asked to hand them over, they refused decisively. Their ‘no’ became a ‘yes’ to Christ: they were massacred for defending the dignity of human life.
The diocesan process on their martyrdom, which concluded in Roermond in 2016, continues today in Rome, as a sign of a testimony that transcends time.
A few years earlier, in 1936, Spain experienced the tragic religious persecution that overwhelmed many missionaries.
Father Juan Puig Serra, chaplain of the asylum in Villalonga (Gerona), was imprisoned and killed on 13 October 1936 in the castle of Figueras. The torture and cruelty he suffered were such that his fellow prisoners remembered them as an ordeal. Born in 1879 in San Martín de Centellas, Father Puig Serra belonged to the province of Barcelona and was a tireless missionary, a man of prayer and service. He died forgiving, like Christ.
Alongside him, in the silence of daily life, we remember Brother Salustiano González Crespo, born in 1871 in Tapia de la Ribera (León). He entered the Congregation of the Mission in 1894 and spent years of humble work as a cook and porter in the Seminary of Oviedo. His evangelical simplicity and spirit of self-denial were a shining example to the seminarians who knew him. He too, during the persecution of 1936, offered his life in hiding, faithful to his vocation as a servant of the poor.
Three stories, one legacy: Vincentian love that does not retreat in the face of evil, but overcomes it with charity.
Like St Vincent de Paul, these brothers believed that ‘love is infinitely inventive’: they bore witness to this not only with words, but with the total gift of themselves.
Lord Jesus,
you called your servants to follow you to the cross.
Grant us the courage and faith to live as they did.
May we, like them, recognise you in the poor,
defend life and sow hope even in darkness.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
