José María Robles Hurtado

José María Robles Hurtado was born on 3 May 1888 in Mascota, a town in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. He entered the seminary of the Archdiocese of Guadalajara and was ordained a priest in 1913. From the beginning of his ministry he was known for an intense devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so marked that contemporaries nicknamed him “el loco del Sagrado Corazón” (the madman of the Sacred Heart). He served in parishes in Jalisco, combining ordinary pastoral work with catechesis, care of the poor and sick, and the promotion of Eucharistic piety.

In the years after ordination he founded a congregation of women religious, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, dedicated to reparation to the Sacred Heart and service to those in need. He also sought to foster public honor of Christ the King, including plans for a monument expressing Mexico’s Catholic identity. These efforts unfolded as conflict deepened between the Church and the post-revolutionary Mexican state. After the Calles Law of 1926 restricted public worship and required priests to register with the government, Robles Hurtado refused to abandon his flock. During the Cristero War (1926–1929) he continued to celebrate Mass in secret, hear confessions, and administer the sacraments.

In June 1927 he was arrested by government forces. On the morning of 26 June he was taken to an oak tree near Quila, Jalisco, and hanged. Catholic accounts of his death record that he forgave his executioners, blessed them, and even assisted in placing the noose, offering his life for the Church. He was thirty-nine years old. His martyrdom belongs to the wider persecution of Mexican Catholics in the 1920s, in which many priests and laypeople were killed.

Pope John Paul II beatified him on 22 November 1992 with other Mexican martyrs of that period, and canonized him on 21 May 2000 in Saint Peter’s Square as one of the Saints of the Cristero War (Cristóbal Magallanes Jara and twenty-four companions). In the General Roman Calendar their optional memorial is 21 May. He is remembered as a diocesan priest of Guadalajara, a founder of a religious congregation, and a martyr of priestly fidelity under persecution.