Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance (Trappists)
PIO HEREDIA AND HIS 18 COMPANIONS
martyrs of Viaceli, Spain
On September 8, 1936, 38 monks of the monastery of Viaceli, in the province of Santander, Spain, were expelled from their monastery by agents of the Federation of Iberian Anarchists. They were all put in prison but later set free. Some found shelter in private homes. Others were able to make the trip to Bilbao, where there was no violent religious persecution. Still others regrouped in Santander to form three small communities which tried to keep up their monastic life in secret.
On December first, probably because of the report of some informant as well as by a pre-established plan, the communist police arrested one of these groups composed only of laybrothers. The police said they wanted to know how these brothers lived and where their money came from. Their replies showed that their Father Prior was the one who handled such matters, which gave a pretext for the police to arrest a second group, that of the Father Prior and of several other priest monks.
The Prior, Father Pio Heredia Zubía (1875-1936), absolutely refused to tell who was helping them. After gruelling cross-examinations and rough treatment during the judicial process held on the night of December 2, the group was condemned to death. The purpose of the process was to give an appearance of legality to their execution but the real motive was hatred of the faith.
According to the account of a 15-year old oblate who was with the monks and then set free, the brothers were shoved into a truck in two separate groups: one on the night of December 3, the other on the following night. Nothing more is known of them. Were they thrown over the cliff of the Santander lighthouse onto the rocks and sea below? Were they put onto a boat and drowned in the deep waters of the bay? Or were they executed by a firing squad near the city’s cemetery? The first hypothesis seems to be the most probable one and is backed by the witness of someone who heard it confirmed by one of the executioners.
The suffering and death of these twelve monks was preceded by that of two of their brothers who had stayed at Viaceli. In fact the very day of the community’s expulsion from its monastery, the invaders had detained two of the priests, the secretary Fr. Eugenio García Pampliega (1902-1936) and Fr. Vicente Pastor Garrido (1905-1936), their hope seeming to be to find money belong to the abbey, which they thought was rich. Their search proved fruitless, however, so that after the two monks were urged to renounce their faith, and refused, the anarquists asked them to go in a car with them to Santander. It was September 21, 1936. The men delayed their departure until after nightfall, then drove some twelve miles from the monastery, killed the Fathers with pistol shots and left the bodies on the side of the road. The people of the place found the bodies the next day and buried them in the neighboring cemetery. Only in 1940 did the monks of Viaceli exhume the remains and carry them to the monastery, where they are buried in the reading cloister.
Four other members of the Viaceli community should be added to the list of monk martyrs. They died under differing personal circumstances between July 1936 and May 1937.
On December 29, 1936, a temporarily professed laybrother, Leandro Gómez Gil (1915-1936) was discoverd by the militia while living in a private residence. He belonged to the group of monk students and laybrothers who had prudently broken up after the disappearance of Father Pio and his companions. The police beat him up so badly that an entire bedsheet was drenched with blood from his nose, mouth and ears. Since Brother Leandro openly declared that he was a religious, he was shoved into a car the next day and disappeared.
Santiago Raba Río (1910-1937) was a solemnly professed monk and subeacon who was drafted into the republican army. They soon discovered his identity as a monk and threatened to kill him. He himself commented, "I won’t last long. They are clearly going to kill me since they know that I am a religious." So it happened. In May 1937 he was found in a trench on the Basque front, killed by a shot in the back of the neck. His brother testified that the commander of his brigade saw that "the Brother" was not with the other soldiers, went looking for him and found him praying. He immediately emptied his revolver into the brother’s head and neck.
A similar fate was in store for another brother, Ildefonso Telmo Duarte (1912-1937), who was under simple vows. The People’s Tribunal of Cóbreces confirmed the fact that this young man was actually a religious, and he himself courageously said so. He was assigned to a disciplinary battalion and given specially hard treatment. On April 30, 1937 one of his persecutors threw a hand grenade at him, killing him on the spot.
Lorenzo Olmedo Arrieta (1888-1936) was another member of Viaceli who became a victim of the persecution. When he was a child, he had entered the Abbey of San Isidoro de Dueñas Later he was sent to Viaceli where he was named Novice Director, then Business Manager. He had then been appointed as Superior of the foundation of Viaceli at Huerta, in the province of Soria, and had gone to the monastery of nuns at Brihuega near Guadalajara, where he was when the civil war broke out. Dom Lorenzo was arrested, beaten up and reviled, but openly confessed that he was a religious. He was killed in the town of Jadraque, probably on July 28, 1936. After he had been buried in the cemetery, his cadaver was identified by one of his brothers in religious life.
To these 18 martyrs of Viaceli should be added a candidate for the monastery, who was actually the first of them all to give his life for Christ: Father José Camí Camí (1907-1936). He was a diocesan priest who wished to enter Viaceli and had already been accepted there. The outbread of hostilities kept him from making the trip and he was called before a tribunal of the people. On the night of July 27, 1936, he, along with the assistant parish priest of Aytona, was tied to the back of a car, which then started up at high speed and dragged the two priests behind it for several miles. When the car arrived at a crossroads, the two men still had the strength to stand up, embrace each other and forgive their assassins. They were finally shot and crushed under the wheels of the car, which was driven over their bodies several times. An eyewitness told these details of their death to the sister of Father José.
The cause of beatification of all these martyrs has now been introduced and is well advanced.
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