SECOND MARTYR FOR CHRIST

SERVANT of GOD MARTA OBREGÓN RODRÍGUEZ is the second young woman who was martyred. She was born in 1969 in  La Coruña, Spain.

She was the second of four attractive and energetic sisters.  Her mother is a supernumerary in the Opus Dei, but Marta decided to join the Neocatechumenal Way after leaving behind a rebellious adolescence.  She believed she found the love of her life in her boyfriend Francisco Javier Hernando, yet before her death they broke up..

“Marta attracted you like a magnet. Whatever place she went to she immediately made friends. She triumphed wherever she went. Everyone wanted to be with her, talk to her and know about her,” Hernando recalled. She was very athletic excelling in tennis  and also loved to play the guitar. According to her mother she was very impulsive and spontaneous yet very affectionate and attentive. Friends say she was willing to help and encourage anyone.

 

With her family

Marta studied journalism at the Compultense University of Madrid, where she lived at a house run by the Augustinian Missionaries. In 1990 she went to Taize in France, where every summer thousands of young people meet for prayer and fellowship. She has a great conversion at this event, and wrote to a friend: “God is the most important thing in my life, He is my love. Life is awesome, but it is shorter than we think.”

On the night of January 21, the feast of St. Agnes (the martyr of purity), Marta was returning home from the Arlanza club of Opus Dei.  A friend of hers had taken her to her apartment, because she had been suspecting for a few days that someone was following her. She entered the main door of the building but she never reached her apartment. Her murderer was waiting for her in the stairs from the parking lot, in front of the elevators, an area not visible from the street. She was abducted and taken to an open field where he intended to rape her. Marta defended herself as long as her strength endured, which was a while. Her nails were broken and there were marks all over her body caused by metallic objects.

According to the police and medical declarations, Marta resisted until the final moment. Fourteen stabs were necessary to end her life. Marta miraculously died a virgin. In the trial of Pedro Luis Gallego, the so-called “elevator rapist”, other girls who had been raped by this man declared that, if they did not resist, he simply raped them. Yet Marta preferred to die before losing her virginity. The forensic doctors stated  Marta had a horrible and very painful death due to the fact that her murderer vented his anger terribly on her. Her naked body was found  six days later in a field, covered with snow.

Marta led a very strong spiritual life, received spiritual direction and prayed daily. She was strengthened by Jesus and, without doubt, learned the value of purity from His Mother.

Marta had the desire for a life of total dedication to Christ, and curiously some of the friends with whom she gathered most are now cloistered nuns . Up to five girls  are scattered in convents of Caleruega, Soria or Palencia.   She used to do half an hour of prayer every day, almost always on her knees, before the Tabernacle, and she spoke frequently with the director of the Club. She remembers that "she was a woman who had found God, but she kept looking for Him with more and more intimacy. 

Marta had written in a notebook: "If I could set an example with my life.”  Marta is already setting an example with her life. You can live a life of piety, like Marta, being in the world and being modern. God had plans for her and hope they are fulfilled, " concludes Marta's mother.