Mateo Correa, Saints of the Cristero War (Memorial to Mexican Martyrs) - San Luis, CO, USA
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Outspoken1
N 37° 12.154 W 105° 25.841
13S E 461781 N 4117430
This memorial garden honors the Mexican priests who were martyred during the Cristero War (1926-1929 Mexico). The priests were later canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
Waymark Code: WM1026R
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 02/10/2019
Views: 3
"Saint Mateo Correa Magallanes (also known as Mateo Correa, Fr. Correa; 23 July 1866 – 6 February 1927) was a Knight of Columbus, of Council 2140.
Correa was born at Tepechitlán, Zacatecas, Mexico. He attended the seminary at Zacatecas on a scholarship, in 1881. He was ordained as priest in 1893 at the age of 27. As a young priest, he gave first communion to Miguel Pro who also became a priest and was later martyred. Fr. Correa was assigned as a parish priest to Concepción del Oro in 1898, and then to Colotlán in 1908. Following the government's repression of the Catholic Church in 1910, he went into hiding. He was assigned to Valparaíso in 1926.
In 1927, during the government’s continuing persecution of the Church, Fr. Correa was arrested by soldiers as he was bringing Viaticum to a woman invalid. Accused of being part of the armed Cristero defense, he was jailed in Zacatecas, and then in Durango. On 5 February 1927, Fr. Correa was asked by General Eulogio Ortiz, to hear the confessions of some imprisoned members of the Cristeros, an uprising of Catholic men who decided to fight back against the persecution of the Church led by Mexico's president Plutarco Elias Calles. Father Correa agreed to administer the Sacrament of Confession to these prisoners, but afterward General Ortiz demanded to know what the condemned prisoners had confessed. Fr. Correa refused. General Ortiz then pointed a gun at Fr. Correa's head and threatened him with immediate death. Fr. Correa continued to refuse, and at dawn on February 6, 1927, he was taken to the cemetery on the outskirts of Durango and shot through the head." (from (
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"Next to the shrine, there is the Memorial of the Spanish Martyrs, a series of other statues honoring the Spanish priests who worked to convert the natives to Christianity and gave their lives for their beliefs.
"Dedicated in 1990, the Shrine was built as an act of faith and love for the parishioners of the Sangre de Cristo Parish," according to the church's website. "It is a place of prayer and solace open to members of all faiths and people of good will."" (from (
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