St. Rafael Guízar Valencia

Saint Rafael Guízar Valencia was born in Cotija de la Paz, Michoacán, on April 26, 1878 (his brother, Antonio Guízar y Valencia, served as the Bishop of Chihuahua for 49 years). He was ordained a priest in 1901. With the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, persecution of the Catholic Church became severe, and Guízar became a special target because of his outspoken defense of the Church. He went underground—disguised as a junk dealer—to continue his work as a priest. In 1915, when the government ordered that he be shot on sight, he escaped to the United States, and then went on to serve the Church in Guatemala and Cuba. While in Cuba, Guizar was consecrated as Bishop of Veracruz. The end of the Revolution enabled him to return to Mexico in January 1920, and he joined Knights of Columbus Council 2311 in Xalapa, Veracruz, on August 16, 1923.

As bishop, he founded a clandestine seminary to train future priests, noting that "A bishop can do without a mitre, a crosier, and even a cathedral, but never without a seminary, because the future of his diocese depends on the seminary." Guízar was forced to flee Mexico once again in 1927 during the persecution of the Church under the anti-clerical and the irreligious President Plutarco Elías Calles. He returned in 1929, the year the Church reached an accord with the government after the end of the Cristero War, in part because of successful lobbying by the Knights of Columbus to get the American government to take an active role in solving the crisis. After his return to Mexico, Guízar continued his ministry, and became known as "the bishop of the poor". He died on June 6, 1938. His remains are now venerated in the Xalapa Cathedral and his feast is kept on June 6.