The civil war in Guatemala dragged on for 36 years before finally coming to an end in 1996. It was one of the most brutal armed conflicts in all Latin America, in which at least 200,000 people were killed, while tens of thousands more simply disappeared without trace.
Among the dead there were also many people murdered by the left-wing guerrillas out of hatred for the Faith. Already, back in 2017 four of these martyrs were beatified who had „shed their blood during the internal armed conflict, because they were convinced that there was no greater love than to give their lives for others and because, as Catholics, they had insisted on living by the values of the Kingdom of Heaven proclaimed by the Lord Jesus, namely the defence of human dignity, the respect for life, for social justice and the protection of the weakest and most vulnerable“, the bishops of Guatemala wrote. In 2021 there were a further 10 beatifications, among them nine priests and one 12-year-old boy.
A beatification process is currently ongoing for a further 129 witnesses of the Faith, all from the diocese of Quiché. Fully one thousand testimonials have already been gathered. But now there is also a plan to make the witness of their lives more widely known, so that these men and women – priests, laity, young people and children – who were murdered for their fidelity to Christ and his Gospel can serve as an inspiration and example for the Catholic faithful of today. And so the bishops want to print a series of little illustrated booklets, telling the story of their lives. Each volume of the series will be devoted to one of these various different groups – young people, catechists, women, families, etc.
One volume will, for example, tell about seven young men – Juventino, Clementino, Màximo, Pedro, José, Marcelino and Francisco – all aged between 16 and 26. These were joyful young people, enthused by the Gospel and actively engaged in their parishes and in caring for the poor. For this they were barbarically murdered. The youngest of them, 16-year-old Pedro, was bound hand and foot and hanged from a tree in the shape of a cross.
ACN has always considered it a privilege, and indeed a special duty, to honour the memory of the martyrs. And so we are proposing to give 19,400 Euros to help fund the printing of a total of 42,000 copies of these little booklets telling the lives of the courageous martyrs of Quiché, so that as many of the Catholic faithful as possible – and above all the young – can come to know about the witness of their fellow Guatemalan Catholics and so find inspiration for their own life of faith.
