Blessed José Antón Gómez, Benedictine Martyr of Madrid

Who was Blessed José Antón Gómez?

Blessed José Antón Gómez was a Spanish Benedictine monk and priest of the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos who was killed for his faith in Madrid in September 1936. For seventeen years he was prior of the small Benedictine community at the church of Our Lady of Montserrat on Calle de San Bernardo. When the persecution of the Church broke out at the start of the Spanish Civil War, he sent his monks into hiding. He was found and shot. He was beatified with three of his brother monks in Madrid on October 29, 2016.

We keep his memory on September 25, the date of death given in the standard lists. Very little has been published about him in English, and we tell only what we can confirm.

The life of José Antón Gómez

From Hacinas to Silos

He was born in 1878 in Hacinas, a village in the province of Burgos, in Old Castile. As a young man he entered the Benedictine Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos, in the same province.

Silos was then a young community in an ancient house. Its monks had been driven out by the government's suppression of monasteries in 1835, and for forty-five years the cloister stood empty. On December 18, 1880, a group of French Benedictines from the Abbey of Ligugé, exiled by the laws of their own country and led by Dom Ildefonso Guépin, a monk of Solesmes, arrived and brought monastic life back. They brought with them the Solesmes tradition of careful liturgy and Gregorian chant. José Antón made his vows in this restored community and was ordained a priest.

Prior of Montserrat in Madrid

Madrid had a Benedictine church with a long history. When Catalonia rose against King Philip IV in 1640, the Castilian monks of Montserrat left their mountain monastery and began a new house in Madrid under the same name. It was abandoned in the upheavals of 1823 and 1835 and served for decades as a women's prison. In 1914 the state declared it a national monument, and in 1918 the use of the church was given to the monks of Silos.

José Antón Gómez came to Madrid as prior in 1919, and he stayed there for the rest of his life. The abbey credits him with restoring the church and with gathering a small community of monks devoted to the ministry proper to their monastic calling. Among them were men who gave spiritual direction, taught Gregorian chant and did historical research. The north wing of the old monastery was handed over to them in 1922 and the south wing in 1927.

Martyrdom in 1936

In July 1936 the military uprising began, and in Madrid churches were burned and priests and religious were hunted down and killed in great numbers. On July 20, 1936, seeing how things were turning, Father José dissolved the community. The monks scattered to the homes of friends.

He himself took refuge first with friends and then in a boarding house. There he was arrested on September 24, 1936. According to the abbey, he was jailed and shot almost at once. The date usually given for his death is September 25.

His three companions died in the following months. Father Antolín Pablos Villanueva of Lerma, who had suffered persecution while serving at the Silos foundations in Mexico, was shot on November 8 at Soto de Aldovea with hundreds of prisoners from the Cárcel Modelo. Father Rafael Alcocer Martínez, a native of Madrid, a fine preacher and a scholar of Arabic, was arrested in the bookshop where he was hiding and killed on October 4 with a priest of the diocese of Sigüenza. Father Luis Vidaurrázaga González of Bilbao, a spiritual director and teacher of Gregorian chant, was betrayed, arrested and executed on the night of December 31.

Beatification

On April 27, 2016, the feast of Our Lady of Montserrat, Pope Francis signed the decree recognizing the martyrdom of "Father José Antón and companions." The four monks were beatified in the Cathedral of the Almudena in Madrid on Saturday, October 29, 2016. At the Angelus the next morning the Pope said: "They were martyrs, killed in Spain in the last century during the persecution against the Church."

• Approved: as martyrs they were beatified without a miracle. No miracle has yet been approved for canonization.
• We know of no reported or traditional miracles attributed to him.

Symbols of Blessed José Antón Gómez in art

He is shown in the black Benedictine habit of the Solesmes congregation, with the martyr's palm. A book, for the Rule of St. Benedict, suits a prior who spent his life keeping it and teaching it to others.

Feast day, tomb and prayer

We keep his memory on September 25. See the feast day calendar. The remains of all four martyrs rest in the church of Nuestra Señora de Montserrat in Madrid, where the Benedictines of Silos still live and pray.

We know of no traditional prayer to him that we can quote. Let us ask Blessed José and his companions to pray for monks and nuns, for the Church in Spain, and for all who are hunted for their faith today. Blessed José Antón Gómez, pray for us.