Soldiers stop searching after Miguel Pro orders a big breakfast

LOS GATOS, California, October 9, 1914 AD — On August 29, 1914 AD, a young man walked out of the town of Zamora, in Mexico, past the guard posts. He wore a high-crowned hat, white linen trousers and a blanket over his shoulders. He was dressed as a peon, a poor farm hand. But he was really a 23-year-old Jesuit called Miguel Pro. In 1988 AD, the Church beatified him as Blessed Miguel Pro.

Before his escape, Miguel Pro had lived in a Jesuit house at El Llano with other young men who were training to be priests. Mexico was in the middle of a revolution. A leader called Venustiano Carranza had raised an army against the president. Carranza said the Catholics were on the president’s side, and he set out to break their power.

Around midnight on August 4, twenty-two of Carranza’s horsemen forced the doorkeeper at El Llano to open the gates. They galloped up to the house, firing. They broke in with axes, smashed the furniture and cut the telephone wires. No one was shot. The next morning, on his way to Mass, Miguel Pro found a stray bullet. It had gone through an outside wall.

The Jesuits in charge decided that keeping the house open would put the young men’s lives at risk. On August 15 the young men left in small groups. They wore everyday clothes, and each of them could take just one book. Miguel Pro set out on foot with three others.

He spent two weeks in Zamora, a walled town full of soldiers of the revolution. The commander there closed the churches. He ordered every priest to report to him, and he put the priests who came in jail. One day Miguel Pro helped carry food to priests hiding in a hut outside town. Then he lay in a cornfield with the others while a patrol passed below.

Breakfast with the soldiers watching

Once he was past the guard posts, Miguel Pro and his three companions ran into soldiers near the railway station. All four were dressed as farm hands. The soldiers began to suspect that the four were not what they seemed. Miguel Pro took his companions into a café and sat them down. He ordered a large breakfast and talked so steadily that none of the others had to say a word. The soldiers watched them eat so calmly and listened to him, and then they gave up their search.

On the train Miguel Pro pretended to be his companions’ servant and carried their bags. He wore an enormous sombrero and a Mexican horseman’s suit. He walked into the city of Guadalajara dressed that way on September 2.

In Guadalajara he found his mother, Josefa Juárez. Carranza’s forces had taken his father’s property, and his father had run for his life. His mother had come to the city ill and without money, with the four youngest children. Miguel Pro found them in one poor room with two beds and a few chairs. On the wall hung a small picture of the Sacred Heart. It was the only thing she had brought from the family’s home in Saltillo. Josefa Juárez told one of her son’s companions, a Mexican Jesuit: “I am happy to have kept nothing but that and to have left everything for Christ. Nothing now remains but the picture of the Sacred Heart who will bless my house and children!”

Goodbye on the platform

At the end of September the railway north to the border with the United States opened again. The young men were ordered to cross. They left on Friday, October 2. At seven in the morning the first group met at the Guadalajara station. Miguel Pro’s mother came to the platform with his little sister, Ana, and his three brothers. The eldest was thirteen. Miguel Pro hugged each of them without shedding a tear. Then the train pulled out, and he waved to them from the window.

He never saw his mother again. She died in Mexico on February 8, 1926 AD, while he lay ill in Belgium.

A week after leaving Guadalajara, the fourteen young Jesuits reached the Jesuit house at Los Gatos, California. They were to go back to their studies, but they had almost nothing to study from. Among the fourteen of them there was one Spanish grammar.