Bl. Deogracias Palacios and Companions

In the spring of 1936, as the anti-Catholic Popular Front amplified its persecution of the Church in Spain, the monastery of Augustinian Recollects in the Spanish city of Motril became a target of the secularists’ hostilities. On May 1, Popular Front officials ordered the Augustinians to cease celebrating Mass in their parish church. On May 3, the Catholic faithful who had attended Mass that day in the Augustinians’ church were insulted and chased by gun-toting Popular Front partisans. On July 24, faced with the imminent danger of execution, the entire community of Augustinian religious vowed not to desert their monastery and parish church. Very early the next day, five of the Augustinians were executed in a hail of gunfire. These included the priests Deogracias Palacios, Leon Inchausti, Jose Rada, and Julian Moreno, and one brother, Jose Ricardo Diez. On July 26, the Augustinian priest Vicente Pinilla was shot to death as he stood holding a crucifix at the door of another church in the city. The church’s pastor, Father Manuel Martin Sierra, was executed with him.