Taken from Magnificat magazine April 2013, Vol 15, No. 2
Father Sabas Reyes Salazar, of Cocula, Mexico, was serving as a parish priest in Tototlan when in January of 1927 troops of Mexico's anti-Catholic government raided his church. The soldiers burned the sanctuary, smashed the religious images, and used the sacred edifice as a stable for their horses. In the face of this crisis, Father Reyes exhorted his flock to pray. When his parishioners asked him whether he would flee, he replied, "We must have faith. Aren't we Christians?...Here is where God put me, and here I wait to see what God disposes." On April 11, 1927, Father Reyes was at a Catholic family's home, having just baptized a child here, when soldiers arrived, asking, "here is the priest?" Father Reyes calmly identified himself, and was immediately arrested. Thereafter he was brutally tortured in a futile effort to make him reveal the whereabouts of two other priests. He suffered the burning of his hands and feet and the breaking of several bones without yielding to their demands. On April 23, 1927, Father Reyes was led out to be shot. As he was being gunned down, he exclaimed repeatedly, "Long live Christ the King!"
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