Feast day: 21 May
Cristóbel Magallanes Jara was born in San Rafael, Totatiche, Jalisco, Mexico, on 30 July 1869. He was a son of Rafael Magallanes Romero and Clara Jara Sanchez, who were farmers. He worked as a shepherd in his youth and then enrolled in the Conciliar Seminary of San José in Guadalajara at the age of nineteen. He was ordained in Guadalajara when he was thirty and served as chaplain of the School of Arts and Works of the Holy Spirit in Guadalajara. He then became parish priest in his hometown of Totatiche, where he helped found schools, carpentry shops and assisted in planning for hydrological works, including the dam of La Candeleria. He took a special interest in the evangelisation of the indigenous Huichol people. He was instrumental in the foundation of the mission in the native town of Azqueltán.
When government decrees closed the seminary in Guadalajara in 1914, Cristóbel offered to open a secret seminary in his parish. In July 1915 he opened the Auxiliary Seminary of Totatiche, which had a student body of seventeen by the following year. It was recognised by the Archbishop of Guadalajara, who appointed a precept and to professors to the seminary.
Cristóbel wrote and preached against armed rebellion but was falsely accused of promoting the Cristero Rebellion in the area. This was an uprising in western and central Mexico against the Calles Law, by which the president sought to limit the power of the church and secularise society (the Mexican Church was in fact not fully free in fact until 1992). The rebellion was supported by the urban classes and tacitly by the church. Cristόbel was arrested on 21 May 1927, while en route to celebrate mass at a farm. He gave away his few possessions to his executioners, gave them absolution and without a trial he was killed four days later by firing squad, together with a fellow priest, Agustìn Caloca in Colotlán, Jalisco. His last words were, “I die innocent and ask God that my blood may serve to unite my Mexican brethren.”
Cristόbel Magallanes was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2000. His feast day is 21 May. It is said that the fictional character Father Christopher, played by Peter O’Toole in the concluding sequence of the film For Greater Glory, was based on the saint.
St Cristόbel Magallenes, pray for us.