Blessed Miguel Pro Won Religious Freedom “in the Midst of the Vortex” — “Viva Cristo Rey!”
How to fight back? What would you do if a secular government shut down your church?
Playful and prayerful, Blessed Miguel Pro (1891–1927) taught a nation how to face and overcome danger.
The harder life got, the more he would crack jokes. His vision of Heaven: “If I meet any long-faced saints there, I will cheer them up with a Mexican hat dance!”
Public Masses outlawed? Revolution and rigged elections? Free speech and religion restricted in a majority-Catholic Mexico south of the U.S. border? He faced it all.
One of his followers said he “had never seen such an exquisite wit, never coarse, always sparkling.”
Mexico’s harsh anti-Catholicism sent him overseas for his education between 1914 and 1926. He was ordained in Belgium in August 1925, where he first served miners supporting socialist, communist, and anarchist ideas, but he quickly won them over to the love of the Gospel.
His poor health was also taking a terrible toll: forced to undergo many operations for ulcers, he remained cheerful, strengthened by prayer.
