NEW MARTYRS of GUATEMALA

While I search for new saints across the globe, I am especially interested when I find new saints from the New World.

Beatified on October 27^th (2018)  in the city of Morales, in the Apostolic Vicariate of Izabal, Guatemala were Venerable TULLIO MARUZZO, priest of the Order of Friars Minor, and LUIS OBDULIO ARROYO NAVARRO, layman of the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi and catechist.

Father Tullio  (Lapio-Italy 1929) and his twin brother Lucio were from the Veneto region in Italy; their parents were poor farmers. Father Tullio and his brother had received ordination to the priesthood by Cardinal Guiseppe Roncalli, the patriarch of Venice and future St. Pope John XXIII.

Father Lucio was sent to Guatemala days after his ordination,  but his brother had to wait seven years before he was sent in mission. Father Tullio was first assigned to Puerto Barrios, on the Atlantic coast, and helped in the construction of what is now the cathedral of the Vicariate of Izabal.

In this vast territory, amid difficulties of all kinds, he expanded his missionary action to reach the most remote villages. He had a calm and patient character as well as a profound piety and a caring charity towards the poor and the sick. He had the gift of being able to welcome everyone, and to take particular care of the formation of the area catechists, the Delegados de la Palabra, for the service of the various communities.

The conditions of the people were miserable, malaria was rife and the region was a hot-bed for the guerrilla insurgency in Guatemala, a conflict much more bloody and destructive than those of other countries in Central America, but hardly known in the U.S.

Father Tullio was not a great orator; he was reserved and peaceful, but he did an incredible amount of arduous work, traveling by foot and horseback to 72 different villages to celebrate the sacraments and give formation to the lay leaders in the communities. This made him suspect with the counter-insurgency, which viewed any leadership in the rural areas with alarm.

One year before he was killed, Father Tullio had written to his relatives in Italy, “The Church has to be with the poor. They need justice and understanding.”

Bl. Luis Obdulio Arroyo Navarro was born in Quiriguá (Guatemala) in 1950 from a modest family. Having worked for a while as a mechanic in Puerto Barrios, he accepted a job as driver at the town hall of Los Amates. At the age of twenty-six he joined the Franciscan Third Order, also becoming a catechist. Later, in deepening his own journey of faith, he participated in the Cursillos de Cristianidad movement, which Father Tullio had introduced into the parish of Quiriguá. He was a mild and helpful man, who willingly put his time and his abilities at the service of the parish community, acting as a free driver and helping out with manual work which he was particularly good at.

At the end of an intense day of apostolic work, Father Tullio decided to fulfill his last commitment by presiding at a meeting of the Cursillos de Cristianidad. The catechist Luis Obdulio offered to accompany him as driver. Both were conscious of being persecuted for the work of evangelization and promotion of human rights carried out by the Church on behalf of the poor, and had previously received explicit threats.

The preaching of truth and of evangelical justice was considered to be a subversive activity by the political regime. On the way back, the car in which Father Tullio and Luis Obdulio traveled was blocked near a banana plantation. At 10 p.m., they were passing the Mayan ruins of Quirigua, when a young boy stopped them asking for a ride. Their usual practice was not to pick up anyone, as there had been too many threats and attempts on the priest’s life, including a grenade attack at his former parish house. But a child was exceptional, and the priest decided to help.

As soon as they stopped, armed men jumped out of the bushes. They beat the priest and Luis Obdulio, and then shot them dead. That boy had been the bait for the deadly trap, set up by his father.

In the same month Bl.Father Tullio and Bl. Luis Obdulio died, Father Stanley Rother (Blog 3/15/2017), a missionary priest from what was then the Diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and the first U.S. citizen beatified as a martyr, was killed. 

These new world martyrs should be an inspiration to us all as they bore witness to the suffering Body of Christ and of their giveness through His Love and Mercy to all.