A half-British teenager has been beatified as a martyr in Spain, more than eight decades after he was murdered by republican militia during the Civil War for his work as a member of the Federation of Young Christians.
“Providence wanted this beatification to take place in the year when our diocesan pastoral objective involved working with young people,” said Cardinal Juan Omella of Barcelona, president of the Spanish Bishops Conference.
“He was committed, body and soul, to building a civilisation of love, and to fighting for justice, peace and solidarity. This young martyr knew how to recognise the desire for social justice within society – the wish to transform society, not through violence, but through the Gospel embodied in the Church's social doctrine.”
The cardinal was preaching at Saturday's beatification Mass for Joan Roig Diggle (1917-1936), attended in Barcelona's Sagrada Familia basilica by the Vatican's nuncio, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, and members of the teenager's family. He said Diggle had been prevented from becoming a priest by the need to find work to support his family, aged 14, but had gained special insight into the plight of the poor through local parish involvements.
“He teaches that all Christians are called to live their faith in community – no one builds alone, since the Christian faith is essentially communal,” the Cardinal added. “Today, he can offer a model of Christian life for young people and adults in our society, as his testimony arouses a desire to follow Christ with joy and generosity.”
Born in Barcelona to a Catalan father and Spanish-born English mother, Diggle was educated by Catholic nuns and Piarist order priests, joining and later co-running a regional branch of the Federation of Young Christians. He was blacklisted during the early stages of the Civil War by anti-clerical republicans, who abducted him from his family home overnight in September 1936. The 19-year-old, who assured his mother in English, according to witnesses, that God would stay with him, was shot five times in the body and head at Santa Coloma de Gramanet, and later interred in the parish church at El Masnou.
In his Sunday Angelus message, the Pope said the teenager's example could “arouse in everyone, especially young people, the desire to live the Christian vocation fully”.
Joan Roig Diggle, photo by Unknown author
Meanwhile, in a letter accompanying the beatification, Cardinal Omella said Diggle's story spoke “to the present complex and difficult times”, and offered special lessons for overcoming Covid-related suffering and loneliness.
Around 8000 Catholic clergy and religious order members, 12 percent of the Spanish total, and tens of thousands of lay Catholics, were killed during the 1930s conflict, after a Popular Front government sanctioned a campaign to desecrate and destroy churches, convents and monasteries.
Two dozen beatifications have been conducted since 1987 to honour Civil War martyrs, of whom 11 have been canonised as saints and over 1700 beatified, half during the current pontificate.
Catalonia's Health Ministry said on Sunday it was investigating complaints that the Church had violated lockdown restrictions by allowing up to 600 people to attend the beatification Mass, although this was vigorously denied by the Barcelona archdiocese, which said it had planned the event for more than a year and met “all legal requirements and sanitary conditions”.
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