Cardinal Semeraro Beatifies 80 Santander Martyrs
He enrolled priests, religious, seminarians and lay faithful killed in 1936–1937 among the Blesseds, urging every baptized Christian to embrace holiness.
On Saturday, November 7, 2026, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, presided at Mass in Santander’s Cathedral of the Assumption as representative of Pope Leo XIV. At the start of the liturgy he read the apostolic letters by which the Holy Father enrolled Francisco González de Córdova, parish priest of Santoña, and 79 companions among the Blesseds.
The rite was followed by acclamation, a peal of bells, the unveiling of a painting by Indalecio Sobrino, and the procession of the relics to the altar. Nearly twenty cardinals, archbishops, and bishops and more than 160 priests concelebrated with diocesan Bishop Arturo Ros.
Witnesses of the 1936–1937 Persecution
The new Blesseds number eighty: sixty-seven diocesan priests, three Carmelite religious, three seminarians, and seven laypeople. All were killed during the religious persecution of 1936–1937. Some were thrown into the sea bound with a stone; others disappeared aboard the prison ship Alfonso Pérez; still others were killed or burned, or died in a kind of concentration camp.
In his homily, Cardinal Semeraro took as his text Luke 23:34—"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." "Jesus does not pronounce words of condemnation, but a prayer of forgiveness," he said. He described the Cross as "the fidelity of a love that not even death can break," and added that "when hate seems to have triumphed, Jesus shows that evil has no power to extinguish God’s mercy, because his love is stronger." The martyr’s witness, he insisted, must be understood from that of Christ, who "prayed on the Cross for his persecutors."
Holiness as the Common Vocation
The cardinal recalled Pope Leo XIV’s general audience earlier that week, in which the Holy Father spoke of the "vast multitude of the Lord’s friends." "It is especially beautiful, above all, the word friends!" Semeraro exclaimed. His central message was that "holiness is not the privilege of a few" but "the common vocation of all the baptized," and that "holiness is not only a goal to admire in others, but a vocation to be personally embraced." The new Blesseds "do not belong only to the past"; they point to "the path of fidelity."
After Communion, Bishop Ros said that "Jesus teaches us to give ourselves" and that the martyrs had "planted the tree of the cross in the center of their heart." He asked their intercession for reconciliation and peace.
For the faithful of Santander and beyond, the beatification places before the Church the blood of priests, religious, and laypeople who remained faithful under persecution, and the call of baptism to the same path of love stronger than death.