Venerated in Roman Catholicism Name Rafael y | Feast October 24 | |
 | ||
Died June 6, 1938
Mexico City, Mexico Beatified January 29, 1995 by Pope John Paul II Canonized October 15, 2006, Vatican City, by Pope Benedict XVI Major shrine Xalapa Cathedral,
Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico | ||
Fiesta y devoción a San Rafael Guízar y Valencia en Xalapa
Rafael Guizar y Valencia (April 26, 1878 – June 6, 1938) was a Mexican Catholic bishop who cared for the wounded, sick, and dying during the Mexican Revolution. Named Bishop of Xalapa, he was driven out of his diocese and forced to live the remainder of his life in hiding in Mexico City. He was also a Knight of Columbus. He was an uncle of Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, a position from which he was removed by the Holy See.
Contents
- Fiesta y devocin a San Rafael Guzar y Valencia en Xalapa
- Mayordomia monse or rafael guizar y valencia
- Life
- Marcial Maciel
- Veneration
- References
Guizar's body was exhumed in 1950, twelve years after his death, and witnesses have said it had not decayed, except for the left eye, which he was said to have offered up for a sinner during his lifetime.
Pope Benedict XVI canonized Guizar on October 15, 2006.
“We welcome the canonization of our brother Knight, Bishop Guizar y Valencia, and know that his life of courage and legacy of evangelization will be an inspiration to each of our 1.7 million members around the world,” said Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson, who attended Guizar’s canonization in Rome.
Mayordomia monse or rafael guizar y valencia
Life
Rafael Guizar y Valencia was born in Cotija de la Paz, Michoacan, on April 26, 1878 (his brother, Antonio Guizar y Valencia, served as the Bishop of Chihuahua for 49 years). He was ordained a priest in 1901. With the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, persecution of the Catholic Church became severe, and Guizar became a special target because of his outspoken defense of the Church.
He went underground—disguised as a junk dealer—to continue his work as a priest. In 1915, when the government ordered that he be shot on sight, he escaped to the United States, and then went on to serve the Church in Guatemala and Cuba.
While in Cuba, Guizar was consecrated as Bishop of Veracruz. The end of the Revolution enabled him to return to Mexico in January 1920, and he joined Knights of Columbus Council 2311 in Xalapa, Veracruz, on August 16, 1923.
As bishop, he founded a clandestine seminary to train future priests, noting that “A bishop can do without a mitre, a crosier, and even a cathedral, but never without a seminary, because the future of his diocese depends on the seminary.”
Guizar was forced to flee Mexico once again in 1927 during the persecution of the Church under President Plutarco Elias Calles. He returned in 1929, the year the Church reached an accord with the government after the end of the Cristero War, in part because of successful lobbying by the Knights of Columbus to get the American government to take an active role in solving the crisis.
After his return to Mexico, Guizar continued his ministry, and became known as “the bishop of the poor". He died on June 6, 1938. His remains are now venerated in the Xalapa Cathedral.
Marcial Maciel
Guizar was the uncle of Marcial Maciel, who became a priest and founded the Legion of Christ, committed to obedient service of the pope. According to investigative journalist Jason Berry and former Hartford Courant religion writer Gerald Renner:
The day before Bishop Guizar died, he had been heard shouting angrily at his eighteen-year-old nephew, Marcial Maciel. He was giving Maciel a dressing-down after two women had come to the bishop's house to complain about Maciel, who was their neighbor. Father Orozco, who was among the original group of boys to found the Legion of Christ in 1941, said he heard the women had complained about the "noise" Maciel was making with children he had brought into his home to teach religion. He said that the seminary officials blamed Maciel for his uncle's heart attack and subsequent death. (Berry & Renner, Vows of Silence, Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York: 2004, p. 155)
The incident would take on new significance decades after Guizar's death, when Pope Benedict XVI ordered Maciel to retire to a life of prayer and penance after a papal commission completed its investigation into his sexual misconduct with Legion seminarians who were minors at the time. Suspended from priestly faculties by Pope Benedict, Maciel did not attend his uncle's canonization. Maciel was also discovered, in 2009, to have fathered possibly as many as six children while under the vow of chastity.
Veneration
Guizar was beatified by Pope John Paul II on January 29, 1995 and Canonised on October 15, 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.