Mariano de la Mata Aparício, OSA was a Spanish Catholic priest and a professed member of the Order of Saint Augustine. He joined the missions in Brazil where he served until his death and was known for his educational work with the poor. His age and diminishing health was no obstacle for him throughout his time in Brazil and it did not hinder his efforts to visit the sick or go out to be with the people he looked after.
Francesco Spoto was an Italian Catholic priest who served in the missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and was killed there. He was also a professed member from the Missionary Servants of the Poor.
During the Spanish Civil War Catholic people faced persecution from the Republican faction of the war, in part due to their support of the nationalists and the recently abolished monarchy. The Catholic Church venerates them as martyrs. More than 6,800 clerics and other Catholic people were killed in what has been dubbed the Red Terror. As of November 2023, 2,129 Spanish martyrs have been beatified; 11 of them being canonized. For some 2,000 additional martyrs, the beatification process is underway
Jaime Hilario Barbal, FSC was a Spanish Catholic and professed Brother of the Christian Schools. He served for almost two decades as a teacher in the schools that his order managed until being caught up in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, which saw the forces of the Second Spanish Republic execute him.
János Scheffler was a Hungarian-born Roman Catholic prelate who served as the bishop of two dioceses before acting as the Bishop of Oradea Mare. He was imprisoned due to opposing the Communist government policies and was killed while imprisoned. He had been noted during his episcopate for his attentiveness to vocations and for the defense of the faith from those forces that sought to disrupt it such as communism.
Otto Neururer was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest and was the first priest to die in a Nazi concentration camp. Neururer did his studies for the priesthood in Brixen before he served as a teacher and pastor in several cities before settling in 1932 in Götzens near Innsbruck. He was arrested in 1938 for attempting to persuade a girl not to be wed to a man of questionable morals and was sent to Dachau before being transferred to Buchenwald where he died after being hanged upside down, nailed to a tree, practically crucified. As he was "crucified" he did not scream, but instead prayed silently. He was left there for 36 hours and then killed by Nazi guard Martin Sommer. Otto Neururer was later beatified.
Gerhard Hirschfelder was a German Roman Catholic priest. He was a vocal critic of Nazism and used his sermons to condemn Nazi propaganda and other aspects of Nazism which drew suspicion on him from the authorities who monitored him and even interrogated him on occasion. He was a staunch supporter of the role of adolescents in the life of the Church and made them a focus in his pastoral activities. In his imprisonment he became a member of the Schoenstatt Movement.
Miroslav Bulešić was a Roman Catholic Croatian priest. He studied in Rome before being recalled to his native Istria where he was ordained in 1943 during World War II prior to two parish postings where he became a vocal critic of Communism. He renewed his parishes through well-organized pastoral activities and was a promoter of frequent sacramental reception. But his criticism of Communism saw him make enemies who soon set upon and succeeded in killing him.
Odoardo Focherini was an Italian Roman Catholic journalist. He issued false documents to Jews during World War II in order for them to escape the Nazi regime but was arrested and sent to a concentration camp where he later died. Yad Vashem later recognized him as a Righteous Among the Nations in 1969 for his efforts.
Mateo Elías Nieves Castillo was a Mexican Roman Catholic priest who was also a member of the Order of Saint Augustine who assumed the name of Elias del Socorro when he became a member of the order.
Engelmar Unzeitig, born Hubert Unzeitig, was a German Roman Catholic priest who died in the Dachau Concentration Camp during World War II on the charge of being a priest. He was a professed member of the Missionary Order of Mariannhill and assumed the religious name Engelmar when he was admitted into the order. He became known as the "Angel of Dachau".
Marcel Callo was a French Catholic member of the Young Christian Workers, a Catholic Action movement inspiring lay participation and solidarity with the poor.
Vicente Vilar David was a Spanish engineer from Spain at the time of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s during a period of intense anti-clerical sentiment. As a worker he strove to adhere to the social doctrine of the Christian faith and spread such values in the workplace and among his colleagues. He was killed on the basis of aiding priests and religious escape the persecution by the Republicans during the Civil War.
Titus Zeman was a Slovak Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Salesians of Don Bosco. Zeman studied in Italian cities prior to his ordination and worked in Slovakia to protect fellow Salesians after the communist regime outlawed religious orders. He was arrested after attempting to send Salesians out of the nation and was imprisoned from 1952 until 1964 and died due to poor health sustained from the prison conditions. He has been acclaimed as a defender of religious liberties.
The Martyrs of Tlaxcala were three Mexican Roman Catholic teenagers from the Tlaxcaltec people of the modern state of Tlaxcala: Cristobal (1514/15–1527) and the two companions Antonio (1516/17–1529) and Juan (1516/17–1529). The three teenagers were converts from the Nahua religion of their families to the Catholic Church in Mexico and received their educations from missionaries of the Order of Friars Minor who baptized them while evangelizing in the area. Their activism and evangelical zeal led to their honour killings by fellow Tlaxcaltec people, including their close relatives, who detested their newfound faith and recognized them as dangers to their values and rituals.
The Martyrs of Natal were a group of 30 Roman Catholic people of Colonial Brazil – two of them priests – killed in the northern part of the colony in massacres that a large group of Dutch Calvinists led. One priest was a Colonial Brazilian Jesuit missionary, while the other priest was an evangelizer himself. The others were all lay Catholics, most of them anonymous members of the Church, some of them children.
Luigi Versiglia, S.D.B. was an Italian Catholic prelate and professed member from the Salesians of Don Bosco who served as the first apostolic vicar of Shaoguan from 1920 until his murder. He was also a former novice master noted for his strict austerities and discipline but for his loving and compassionate care of the poor and defenceless. He led the first Salesian expedition to China in 1906 and remained there until his death, functioning for the people in various capacities such as a gardener and barber.
Juan Bautista and Jacinto de los Ángeles were Mexican Roman Catholics. The pair were both instructed to protect moral practices in their town and to ensure that the faith was safeguarded in the face of pagan and tribal beliefs and practices. But this put them into conflict with some locals who decided to hunt them down and kill them after the pair interrupted a ritual and confiscated their possessions. The two men were slain after being captured in a local Dominican convent and after having professed their faith to their attackers.
Johannes Laurentius Weiss and his two companions Michele Pio Fasoli and Antonio Francesco Marzorati were German and Italian priests of the Order of Friars Minor. All of them were missionaries. In 1704 they set off from Rome for Cairo to begin their travel through the Nile River to reach Ethiopia. But the team experienced significant pitfalls: conflicts in Ethiopia slowed them down and forced their return to Cairo though the team succeeded in their second attempt to reach their destination. Finally, anti-Catholicism was being fomented there under Miaphysite Orthodox Emperor of Ethiopia Dawit III, who decreed the missionaries, who accepted the Council of Chalcedon, to be nothing more than heretics, which resulted in the three friars being stoned.
Victor Emilio Moscoso y Cárdenas was an Ecuadorian Roman Catholic priest and professed member from the Jesuits. He served as a teacher in the COPEM college in Riobamba since 1892 and it was there that he was slain during the Liberal Revolution which had started in 1895. Moscoso was a noted philosopher and taught rhetoric and grammar to his students while serving as a professor; he also served as the college's rector from 1893 until his assassination.
