Blessed León Inchausti

Who was Blessed León Inchausti?

Blessed León Inchausti was a Basque friar of the Augustinian Recollects who served as a missionary on two continents and died a martyr in his old age. Born in 1859 in the village of Ajangiz, near Guernica, he was ordained in Manila, worked in the Philippines until the revolution of 1898, and then spent eighteen years in Brazil. He was living quietly in the Recollect convent of Motril, on the Mediterranean coast of Granada, when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936. On July 25 he was taken from the convent and shot with his brothers. He was seventy-seven. Pope John Paul II beatified him with the Martyrs of Motril on March 7, 1999. The date given for the group is May 5.

A Basque friar for the missions

He was born on June 27, 1859, in Ajangiz, in the province of Biscay. At nineteen, in 1878, he entered the Augustinian Recollects, a reform branch of the Augustinian family born in Spain in the sixteenth century. The Recollects had served in the Philippines since the early 1600s.

He was sent to Manila in 1884 and ordained a priest there on December 22 of that year. For fourteen years he worked in the Philippine missions. The revolution against Spanish rule in 1898 ended that work, and he returned to Spain.

The order was then opening new fields in Latin America. From 1903 to 1921 Fr. León served in Brazil, where the first Recollects had begun work in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro. The order's own history of those beginnings counts him among the future Martyrs of Motril who lived and preached there, and gives his time in Brazil as eighteen years.

Back in Spain he lived in the Recollect houses of Granada and Bilbao, and from 1928 in Motril.

The Martyrs of Motril

When the Civil War began in July 1936, a wave of violence against priests and religious swept across the Republican zone. Fr. León knew the danger and stayed with his community. At dawn on July 25, 1936, the feast of St. James, militiamen seized the friars in the Augustinian Recollect convent of Motril, dragged them through the streets to a garden and shot them. Killed with León that day were Fr. Deogracias Palacios, Fr. José Rada, Fr. Julián Benigno Moreno and Brother José Ricardo Díez.

Fr. Julián Moreno, a poet, was the nephew of St. Ezequiel Moreno, the Recollect bishop of Pasto in Colombia. The next day, July 26, Fr. Vicente Pinilla was shot in front of the church of the Divina Pastora with its parish priest, Manuel Martín Sierra. Fr. Vicente Soler, arrested on July 29, was shot with eighteen other prisoners at the wall of the town cemetery on August 15. Fr. Julián's remains lie in a common grave in the Motril cemetery.

Old men and young men

The order's list of its beatified martyrs shows how mixed the Motril community was. León, born in 1859, was the eldest. Fr. José Rada was born in 1861, Fr. Vicente Soler in 1867, Fr. Julián Benigno Moreno in 1871 and Fr. Vicente Pinilla in 1872, all of them men past sixty by 1936. Fr. Deogracias Palacios, born in 1901, and Brother José Ricardo Díez, born in 1906, were young men in their thirties. Old missionaries and young religious died together within a few weeks, and the Church honors them as one group.

Beatification

Pope John Paul II beatified the seven Recollects and Fr. Manuel Martín Sierra in St. Peter's Basilica on March 7, 1999, as martyrs killed in hatred of the faith. As in every cause of martyrdom, no miracle was required, and no approved or reported miracle is attached to his name.

Symbols of Blessed León Inchausti in art

There is no established iconography of Fr. León. Images of the Martyrs of Motril show them as they lived:

• The black habit of the Augustinian Recollects, with its hood and wide leather belt.
• A palm branch: the sign of a martyr.
• A missionary's cross: his years in the Philippines and Brazil.

Feast day and prayer

Santi e Beati lists the Martyrs of Motril on May 5; the anniversary of his death is July 25. See also the feast day calendar.

We have not found a prayer written for Blessed León alone. Let us ask him to pray for missionaries, for the elderly who keep faith to the end, and for peace and forgiveness in every land torn by civil war. Blessed León Inchausti and companions, pray for us.