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Tucson woman remembers Mexico’s Cristero War

Tucson woman remembers Mexico’s Cristero War

By VICTOR CALDERON
The New Vision

Manuela Flores still recalls how her Catholic faith was strengthened as a young woman growing up in Mexico when the government was against the Church.
“They put police outside the churches so people wouldn’t go in,” Flores, 99, said of the Cristero War that took place from 1926 to 1929. She now lives at the Park Avenue Health and Rehabilitation Center in Tucson.
During the Cristero War, then Mexican President Plutarco Calles expelled all but a few clergy because he said the Church was against the Socialist state he wanted. About 90,000 people were murdered, according to Ruben Quezada, author of “For Greater Glory,” which was made into a film with Andy Garcia and Eva Longoria.
Some 35 martyrs have been canonized and 15 beatified, Quezada said.  Flores was 13 years old when the war began and was living in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. She knew people that moved to Texas to escape religious persecution.
“We wanted to defend our faith so we would shout ‘Viva Cristo Rey’ (Long live Christ the King),” she said.
Flores later came to the United States and moved from California to Tucson in 1970. She was a parishioner at St. Augustine Cathedral when Msgr. Arsenio Carrillo was the pastor.
All these years later, she speaks favorably of Pope Francis while remembering the challenges she went through to practice her faith as a young woman.
“Nothing would guide me away from my faith,” she said.