Academic Program

Christian Martyrdom in the Face of Persecution: Witness, Virtue, and Fidelity

Jorge Tinoco Flores, Academic, professor and consultant

Language: Spanish

Religious persecution in Mexico gave rise not only to resistance, but also to extraordinary forms of Christian witness. This lecture examines martyrdom from the perspective of virtue, interior freedom, and fidelity to the faith, with particular attention to the experience of the Mexican martyrs and to what properly distinguishes Christian martyrdom from other forms of heroism or sacrifice.

Coffee Break

From García Moreno to Anacleto González Flores: Political Assassination, Christian Witness, and Martyrdom

Rodrigo Ruiz Velasco Barba, Historian and researcher

Language: English

This lecture examines how the assassination of Gabriel García Moreno in 1875 was interpreted and remembered by Catholics in Mexico as a form of martyrdom, understood here according to the philosophical category developed by Dariusz Karłowicz: a death in which the radical unity between conviction and existence allows the person himself to bear witness to the truth he professes. The lecture then explores how the memory of such a Christian witness could become a source of formation for later generations, culminating in the world of Anacleto González Flores. In this way, martyrdom appears not only as the final testimony of an individual life, but as a memory capable of forming future witnesses and future martyrs.

Anacleto González Flores: "Tú serás Rey" and the Formation of the Christian Witness

Patrick Quinlan, Doctoral Researcher in Global Law

Language: English

Written in 1927, the year of Anacleto González Flores's martyrdom, Tú serás Rey is above all a work of Christian formation addressed to the young. Anacleto seeks to form persons capable of overcoming fear and mediocrity and entering courageously into the struggles of thought, word, and action so that Christ may reign. Read alongside his own death, the book acquires a particular philosophical significance: the author who sought to form Christian witnesses ultimately became a witness himself. The lecture explores the relationship between Anacleto's ideal of Christian formation and the unity of conviction, action, and existence manifested in his final testimony.

Coffee Break

Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Cristeros: Marian Devotion in a Time of Persecution

Lawrence Lew, Chaplain

Language: English

Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe held a central place in the religious identity of the Cristeros and in their understanding of fidelity to Christ. Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P., will explore how Marian spirituality, the Rosary, and the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe sustained Mexican Catholics during persecution and strengthened their spiritual resistance. The talk will place this devotion within the wider Catholic tradition, highlighting the relationship between Mary, Christian witness, and martyrdom.

Faith as Martyrdom of the Intellect: Thomas Aquinas on the sanctification of the rationality

Angel Dimitrov, Doctoral Student in Philosophy

Language: English

This paper examines the relationship between the theological virtue of faith and the gifts of understanding and knowledge as essentially supernatural realities that nevertheless genuinely transform the activity of the human psyche. It analyzes the interplay between the light of faith, in comparison with which discursive reasoning grounded in the phantasms of the imagination appears as darkness and ignorance. In this contrast, the intellect experiences the death of its natural ways of thinking about God, anticipating its resurrection in the act of supernatural contemplation.

Forgiveness and Society

Miriam Savarese, Professor

Language: Italian

Drawing on Prof. Miriam Savarese’s recent research on forgiveness in St. Thomas Aquinas, the talk asks a central question: is gratuitous forgiveness possible even in the face of grave injustice? The Cristero War and the witness of its martyrs provide a concrete context for exploring how renouncing hatred and vengeance can become an act of mercy and charity, opening a path toward reconciliation without erasing the memory of the wrong suffered.

Discussion / Q&A

Reception

Aula 105