Born to a wealthy military leader in 1562 at Tounucumada, Japan, Paul Miki felt called to religious life at a young age. He became a Jesuit in 1580 and was soon widely known as a successful evangelist. In 1587, the political climate became hostile to Christianity, when the Japanese emperor became suspicious of the Catholic missionaries that had followed in St. Francis Xavier's footsteps a few decades earlier and were converting large numbers of Japanese. He accused the missionaries of "corrupting and stirring up the lower classes" and ordered them all out of the country. Miki and 25 other missionaries and laypeople, including three teenaged boys, were arrested in 1597 for disobeying his edict.
Over the next 30 days, they were forcibly marched 600 miles through the snow from Kyoto to Nagasaki so that they could be a warning to other Japanese Christians. On Feb. 5, 1597, as the group approached the hill in Nagasaki where they were to be tied to crucifixes measured especially for each of them, they all sang the Te Deum. More than 4,000 residents of Nagasaki – many of them Catholics who were crying and praying – witnessed the executions.
Miki's last sermon was delivered from the cross: "All of you who are here, please, listen to me... I have committed no crime, and the only reason why I am put to death is that I have been teaching the doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I am very happy to die for such a cause, and see my death as a great blessing from the Lord. At this critical time when, you can rest assured that I will not try to deceive you, I want to stress and make it unmistakably clear that man can find no way to salvation other than the Christian way. The Christian religion tells us to forgive our enemies and those who do harm us, and so I say that I forgive the emperor and those responsible for my death. I have no hatred for the emperor; indeed, I wish that he and all the Japanese would become Christians."
In another account of his final preaching, he was recorded as also saying, "The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason that I die. I believe that I am telling the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask Christ to help you become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ's example, I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain."
Like his 25 companions, Miki died on the cross after being stabbed through the chest with a lance. He was just 30 years old, but he was not the youngest in the group: St. Louis Ibaraki was 12, St. Anthony was 13, and St. Thomas Kozaki was 14. St. Anthony's parents were at the foot of his cross to witness their son's bloody killing.
Persecution of Christians continued for another 300 years. Thousands of Catholic missionaries and the faithful – including their spouses and children – were imprisoned, tortured, burned alive, drowned, buried alive, hung or beheaded for the faith. More than 650 martyrs were killed on Martyrs Hill in Nagasaki alone. Japanese Christianity was driven underground until the 1860s, when European missionaries returned and found the faith still alive. In 1889, Japan constitutionally recognized freedom of religion, and in 1919 the country established diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
Miki and his 25 companions, called "The 26 Martyrs of Japan," were canonized in 1862 by Pope Pius IX, and a shrine was built on the hill in 1962.
— Sources: Catholic News Agency, Catholic Online, 26 Martyrs Museum
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To learn more about the day in 1597 when the 26 Martyrs were crucified and the memorial that now stands in Nagasaki, go online to www.26martyrs.com.
St. José Sánchez del Río was a Mexican Cristero (“soldier for Christ”) who was martyred for refusing to renounce his Catholic faith.
The Cristero War erupted in 1926 after the Mexican government began enforcing anti-clerical laws written into the Mexican Constitution. President Plutarco Elias Calles, who took office in 1924, violently targeted the Church, seizing church property, closing religious schools and convents, and exiling or executing priests. In response, largely Catholic populations across Mexico began taking up arms against the government, with the war cry “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”)
Nicknamed “Joselito,” José was born March 28, 1913, in Sahuayo, Michoacán, Mexico.
Wanting to defend the faith and rights of Catholics, he followed in the footsteps of his two older brothers and asked his mother for permission to join the Cristeros when the conflict broke out.
She objected, telling him that he was too young.
“Mama,” he replied, “do not let me lose the opportunity to gain heaven so easily and so soon.”
His parents relented and he joined the rebel army as a flagbearer.
On Feb. 5, 1928, the 14-year-old boy was captured during a battle and imprisoned in the church sacristy. In order to terrorize him, soldiers made the boy watch the hanging of one of the other captured Cristeros. But José encouraged the man, saying, “You will be in heaven before me. Prepare a place for me. Tell Christ the King I shall be with Him soon.”
In prison, he prayed the rosary and sang songs of faith. He wrote a beautiful letter to his mother telling her that he was resigned to do God's will. José's father tried desperately to ransom his son, but he was unable to raise the money in time.
On Feb. 10, 1928, his captors brutally tortured the boy – sheering off the skin of the soles of his feet and forcing him to walk on salt, followed by walking through the town to the cemetery. The young boy screamed with pain but would not give in.
At times the soldiers stopped him and said, “If you shout ‘Death to Christ the King,’ we will spare your life.” But he answered: “Long live Christ the King! Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe!”
Once he arrived at the cemetery, José was asked once more if he would deny his faith. Once more he shouted out “Long live Christ the King!”, and was summarily shot.
His mother and father were among those forced to witness his execution.
He was canonized on Oct. 16, 2016, by Pope Francis, and his feast day is Feb. 10. He is the patron saint of children and teenagers.
During a 2021 dedication of a statue of St. José Sánchez del Río at the Martyrs Shrine in Guadalajara, Mexico, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, the Archbishop of Guadalajara, encouraged young people to look to “the witness and example of St. José Sánchez” to find meaning in their lives.
The cardinal lamented that “there are many young men and women who aren’t finding what to do with their lives, they don’t know what they are in this world for, they’re not discovering what they came into this world for, and live an existential void.”
These young people, he continued, “seek to fill that existential void with things that apparently fill them, but the only thing they produce is a deeper void.”
He urged them to “look at the testimony of a young man, born into an ordinary Christian family, but who had the courage to discover Christ and to be faithful to Him.”
— Vatican News Service, Catholic News Agency, Wikipedia