On July 31, 1926, church bells fell silent throughout Mexico. The implementation of the punitive “Calles Law” and the subsequent suspension of public worship by the episcopate fundamentally fractured the daily life of a country where the lived experience of faith dictated the rhythm of community life. One hundred years after that historical wound, philosopher Rodrigo Guerra López—secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America—offered a profound academic reflection on October 7 at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, inviting us to view religious persecution and the Cristero resistance not as ammunition to fuel present-day ideological battles, but as a lesson in truth, reconciliation, and historical empathy.

Beyond the ideological trench

Far from reducing the conflict to a simple Manichean confrontation or a political caricature, Guerra proposed a “transpolitical” interpretation—inspired by the Italian thinkers Augusto del Noce and Rocco Buttiglione—to decipher the complexity of the events. Drawing on the research of historian Jean Meyer and recent studies, he emphasized that the Cristero War was a tragic civil war with a decisive religious component, where popular motivations, the diversity of the Mexican countryside, and the growing tensions between a centralizing revolutionary state and an institutionally autonomous Church clashed violently.

The speaker explored the highs and lows of the process: from the dramatic departure of priests from their parishes to the fragility of the 1929 “Arrangements”—which left thousands of demobilized combatants unprotected and triggered a bloody confinement and a “Second Cristiada”—to the pragmatic détente under the government of Lázaro Cárdenas.

The maturation of ecclesial thought

One of the central contributions of the conference was to highlight the theological and magisterial evolution from 1926 to the present day. Guerra explained how the understanding of the laity, the right to religious freedom, and the presence of the Kingdom of God in history has deepened since the Second Vatican Council and the teachings of popes such as John Paul II, Francis, and Leo XIV.

“Fidelity to tradition is not about freezing a particular historical moment,” the philosopher pointed out. While the martyrs of persecution deserve all our respect and veneration as unwavering witnesses of the faith, the way to influence contemporary society requires rejecting any attempt to impose unequivocal political answers or to instrumentalize faith as a party platform. The Declaration Dignitatis Humanae made it clear that religious freedom is an inalienable part of the dignity of the human person, not a concession or a privilege granted by the State.

A disarmed and disarming love

In addressing the moral limits of self-defense and the profound meaning of Christian martyrdom, Rodrigo Guerra concluded by recalling a personal confidence that Pope Saint John Paul II shared with Professor Rocco Buttiglione. He noted that in defending the truth or the cause of Jesus Christ, one may, in extreme circumstances, shed blood; however, the essence of the Gospel lies in a radical conviction: “As Christians, we must be willing to shed our own blood before that of our enemies . ”

In a world marked by increasing polarization, the centenary of the Cristero War is presented not as a reason for revenge or nostalgia for old trenches, but as a call to build bridges, heal wounds through social friendship, and defend freedom from the unarmed force of truth, goodness, and forgiveness.

Full conference:

Historical truth and historical empathy

A meditation aloud, one hundred years old

of religious persecution and the Cristero resistance

Rodrigo Guerra López *

Pontifical University of the Holy Cross

October 7, 2026

Introduction

In the summer of 1926, something happened in many parts of Mexico that, viewed from a century away, may seem difficult to grasp in its full gravity: the church bells stopped ringing in cities and towns across the country. This was not merely an anecdotal or fortuitous event. It was not simply a change in the landscape of the towns. In a predominantly Catholic society, the bells accompanied birth and death, summoned people to Mass, announced festivals, marked the hours, and publicly expressed that religious experience was an integral part of the community’s daily life. When public worship was suspended on July 31, 1926, and the priests withdrew from the churches, many Mexicans felt that something essential to their world had been uprooted.

Jean Meyer has recently emphasized, as the centenary of these events approaches, that the so-called “religious conflict” was much broader than the armed Cristero War. The war was one of its episodes, perhaps the most dramatic, but it can only be understood within the context of a long and complex relationship between the Church, the liberal state, and later, the revolutionary Mexican state. Furthermore, as Meyer himself has pointed out, remembering this history requires preventing memory from fueling new polarizations. The historian’s task is to understand the actors in their own time, not to retrospectively recruit them for our contemporary battles (Meyer, 2026). 

All the empathy and sympathy we may feel for the many witnesses of faith who existed in Mexico during times of persecution requires, in order to be fully appreciated, proper contextualization and historical interpretation. The lack of contextual thinking in this and so many other episodes of history easily leads us to ideological manipulations that end up obscuring the complexity of the events and the true richness and lessons that can be learned from them.

The following lines are not the work of a specialist in historical studies, but rather of a philosopher who, upon examining certain events, attempts to offer a transpolitical interpretation of them. This approach, which may at first seem disconcerting, was learned by the author of this piece from Augusto del Noce and Rocco Buttiglione. Through their works, both help us to view history—always complex, always full of light and shadow—with affection and empathy, but they also invite us to transcend it from a higher perspective, revealing some valuable lessons (Buttiglione, 1991; Del Noce, 1982).

From the 1917 Constitution to the Calles Law

The immediate legal precedent was the Mexican Constitution of 1917. Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and especially 130 introduced severe restrictions on the institutional presence of churches. Education was subjected to a secular regime that was particularly restrictive for religious organizations; religious orders lost recognition; public displays of worship were limited; churches lacked legal personality and the ordinary capacity to own property; ministers of religion were deprived of certain political rights; and state legislatures were given the power to determine the number of priests who could exercise their ministry.

However, for some years there was a considerable gap between the letter of the Constitution and reality. Carranza and Obregón were anticlerical, but the provisions were applied with varying degrees of intensity. There were states extremely hostile to the Church and others where governors, bishops, and local authorities found pragmatic ways to coexist. The decisive break came during the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles (December 1, 1924 to November 30, 1928) .

It is important not to reduce Calles to the caricature of a man who simply wanted Mexicans to stop believing in God. His anticlericalism was radical, but his fundamental problem was also political: he considered the existence of a powerful, organized Church, obedient to Rome and capable of socially mobilizing millions of citizens, incompatible with the consolidation of the revolutionary state. From this perspective, private religion could be tolerated; an institutionally autonomous Church, on the other hand, appeared as a rival power. The failed attempt in 1925 to promote a Mexican Catholic Church separate from Rome is particularly revealing: it was not a matter of replacing all religion with atheism, but of weakening a Church that escaped the control of the State (Meyer, 2022).

In 1926, what is popularly known as the “Calles Law” was enacted. Technically, it was the Law that reformed the Penal Code for the Federal District and Territories regarding common crimes and crimes against the Federation related to religious worship and external discipline, intended to enforce the religious restrictions of the Constitution through criminal penalties. Its importance was enormous because it introduced fines, arrests, imprisonment, closures, expulsion of foreign priests, and punishments for those who violated the provisions regarding religious worship and external discipline. It could be said that if the 1917 Constitution had established the system, the Calles Law gave it teeth. It is important to distinguish it from the Regulatory Law of Article 130, issued in January 1927.

One of the most delicate conflicts was the registration of priests. For the government, it might have seemed a mere administrative matter: anyone engaged in a regulated activity had to register with the authorities. For the Church, however, the issue touched upon a much deeper principle. A priest does not receive his priestly mission from the State; he receives it from the Church, specifically from his bishop. If the authorities could determine who could serve, how many ministers there could be, and under what conditions they could do so, the discussion ceased to be simply bureaucratic and became a question of ecclesiastical freedom.

When resistance turned into war

The episcopate’s response was dramatic: with the legislation taking effect on July 31, 1926, public worship was suspended. Jean Meyer has recovered moving testimonies from those who lived through that night. In San Julián, Jalisco, a woman recalled decades later the packed church, the confessions, the hastily celebrated marriages, the final blessing, and finally, the darkness. For those faithful, the priest’s departure was experienced almost as an orphanhood (Meyer, 2026). 

The Cristero War cannot be explained simply as a clerical conspiracy or as a peasant uprising manipulated by bishops and Catholic organizations . In many places, the initial uprisings were spontaneous, local, and poorly coordinated. Religion was not merely a smokescreen behind which economic or agrarian interests were hidden; for many combatants, it was a genuine motivation. Subsequent research, such as Matthew Butler’s study of Michoacán, has simultaneously confirmed that the peasant world was far more diverse than a romanticized image of a unanimously Cristero Mexican countryside might suggest: there were Catholic communities that rose up and others that aligned themselves with agrarian reformers and revolutionary authorities (Butler, 2004). 

That’s why it’s better to speak of a civil war with a decisive religious component than a simple confrontation between “Catholics” and “non-Catholics.” In other words, it’s important to consider that even among government officials there were practicing Catholics. The political and religious boundaries didn’t perfectly align.

How many people died? Here, special caution is necessary. There is no current and universally accepted figure for “Catholics killed for being Catholic.” Nor can all those killed on the Cristero side be considered martyrs in the canonical sense. Jean Meyer estimated approximately 25,000 to 30,000 Cristero fighters killed, compared to around 50,000 men from the federal and auxiliary forces. Adding the civilian mortality caused by the war, repression, forced displacement, famine, and epidemics, he considered a total figure of up to 250,000 lives lost to be possible (Meyer, 2022).

Another academic study from 2025 speaks of at least 90,000 victims and mentions the estimate of a quarter of a million when the broader civil effects are included (Cazorla-Sánchez & Rodríguez-López, 2025). 

Rome, too, did not speak with one voice.

The war also revealed deep divisions within the Church. Some bishops believed that any concession to the government would imply accepting an illegitimate subordination. Others judged it necessary to protect sacramental life and seek some form of coexistence. Nor was the Roman Curia monolithic. Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State to Pius XI, was more inclined toward pragmatism than other figures, such as Cardinal Tommaso Boggiani. Vatican documents subsequently opened to researchers have allowed for a more precise reconstruction of these tensions.

In 1926, Pius XI adopted a particularly firm stance: the Church should not perform any act that could be interpreted as acceptance of legislation considered a violation of its freedom. But three years of conflict forced a reconsideration not of doctrine, but of strategy . The suspension of public worship had failed to alter the Constitution, the war offered no certain prospect of victory, and the pastoral damage was immense. Millions lived without a regular sacramental life; priests and bishops were dead, in hiding, or expelled; dioceses were profoundly disorganized.

Pius XI eventually concluded that indefinitely maintaining the suspension of worship could cause more harm than abandoning it. This shift is essential for understanding the 1929 “Arrangements.” It did not mean that Rome began to consider Mexican laws just. It meant that Rome ceased to deem it appropriate to continue combating them through the suspension of worship.

The “Arrangements” that could hardly be called agreements

The 1929 negotiations primarily involved Archbishop Leopoldo Ruiz y Flores, Pascual Díaz Barreto, President Emilio Portes Gil, and U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow. On June 21, an agreement was reached that became known as the “Arrangements.”

The expression can be misleading. There was no concordat. The Constitution was not amended, the Calles Law was not repealed, Article 130 was not eliminated, and the Church did not obtain the legal status it claimed. Precisely for this reason, Meyer titled his subsequent research ” If They Can Be Called Agreements…” (Meyer, 2021). The documentation opened in Mexico and at the Holy See allowed him to demonstrate the fragility of an arrangement that rested as much on public declarations as on political understandings and guarantees that were not always formally secured. 

The government’s main concession was to interpret the laws less aggressively. President Portes Gil stated that the State did not intend to destroy the Church or interfere in its spiritual functions. The sensitive registration of priests was understood in a way that allowed the preservation, at least de facto, of the Church’s established principle: the State did not create priests or decide who held the ministry; it registered those who had been appointed by the religious authority itself.

In return, the Church resumed public worship. The bells rang again, priests returned to the churches, and the administration of the sacraments gradually returned to normal. But this decision also meant that the Cristeros laid down their arms.

Herein lies one of history’s most painful wounds. The combatants had been virtually excluded from the negotiations that ended the war. Many had fought for almost three years, convinced they were defending the freedom of the Church, and now they were being asked to demobilize without the laws that had sparked the uprising being repealed. From Rome, however, the question was different: if it is possible to restore sacramental life, is it morally reasonable to prolong a war with an uncertain outcome?

Many Cristeros obeyed. But some felt abandoned. The problem was compounded because, once the weapons were surrendered, numerous former fighters and leaders were hunted down and killed. Meyer has estimated around 1,500 victims in this subsequent selective repression, although the exact figure remains a subject of debate (Meyer, 2021).

The “Second Cristero War”

The peace of 1929 did not definitively resolve the conflict either. From 1931 and 1932 onward, restrictions, expulsions of priests, and the closure of churches returned in various states. Pius XI denounced in Acerba animi that the expectations created by the 1929 agreement had been disappointed. He expressly recalled that the resumption of worship had never meant acceptance of the challenged laws: a method of resistance had been abandoned, not the demand for freedom for the Church (Pius XI, 1932).

In this context arose what is commonly known as the Second Cristero War . Its chronology varies according to region and author, but it is generally placed roughly between 1931–1932 and 1938, with some groups surviving afterward. It never reached the military scale of the first. It was a fragmented, guerrilla-style, and regional phenomenon, fueled by disillusionment with the “Arrangements,” the new anti-clerical policies, and, from 1934 onward, the conflict surrounding socialist education.

There is also a fundamental difference: the Catholic hierarchy and the Holy See did not encourage the new rebellion. The so-called “irreducibles” found themselves in the paradoxical situation of fighting while claiming to be defending a Church that asked them not to fight. Enrique Guerra Manzo has shown that these groups cannot be reduced to mere bandits or disorganized remnants of the first Cristero War; they had their own motivations, networks, and projects, although they lacked the national strength of the original movement of 1926–1929 (Guerra Manzo, 2005). 

The true détente began during Lázaro Cárdenas’s presidency. After his break with Calles, who was expelled from the country in 1936, religious policy gradually moderated. The 1938 oil expropriation even held significant symbolic value: broad sectors of the Catholic community supported Cárdenas in his conflict with foreign companies. State and Church were beginning to discover that they could disagree profoundly and yet recognize each other as legitimate actors within the same society. The true Mexican modus vivendi emerged from this learning process more than from the fragile documents of 1929.

Looking at the Cristero War one hundred years later

A century later, remembering that persecution remains necessary. The message published by the Mexican Episcopal Conference on the centenary proposes preserving the memory of the martyrs, defending religious freedom, and working for reconciliation, without turning war or violence into a cause for celebration (Mexican Episcopal Conference, 2026). Christian and historical remembrance requires more than simply vindicating some and condemning others.

Perhaps the first lesson is to respect the historicity of events . We must not mechanically impose current categories on people who lived a hundred years ago. Neither Plutarco Elías Calles, nor the bishops, nor the Cristero peasants, nor Pius XI thought with our contemporary categories about democracy, human rights, religious freedom, or Church-State relations. The Vatican II Declaration Dignitatis humanae , for example, later developed a much more explicit understanding of the right of every person to immunity from religious coercion and of the State’s obligation to legally recognize that freedom (Second Vatican Council, 1965a). 

But the principle also works in reverse. It would be a mistake to simply transfer the theological and political categories of 1926 to the present as if no doctrinal development had occurred in the last hundred years. Fidelity to Catholic tradition does not consist of freezing a particular historical moment.

This is particularly evident in the theology of the laity . Pius XI understood Catholic Action as “the participation and collaboration of the laity with the hierarchical apostolate,” a formulation perfectly understandable in the ecclesiological context of the interwar period (Pius XI, 1931, 1935). Vatican II did not reject Catholic Action, which remains a valuable reality of the Church; but it greatly broadened the understanding of the lay vocation. Lumen Gentium teaches that the secular character is “proper and peculiar” to us, the lay faithful. We, the laity, seek the Kingdom of God precisely by engaging in temporal affairs and transforming them from within, like leaven (Second Vatican Council, 1964, no. 31). Christifideles Laici later deepened this perspective and reminded us that the faithful cannot abdicate their direct responsibility in political and social life (John Paul II, 1988, no. 42). 

From this emerges a third lesson: our understanding of the Kingdom of God and political action has also matured . The 1925 encyclical Quas primas used strong language regarding Christ’s kingship over individuals and societies, characteristic of the magisterium of that period (Pius XI, 1925). It would be wrong to claim that the Second Vatican Council denied the social dimension of faith or the kingship of Jesus Christ. But subsequent magisterial vocabulary emphasizes other aspects and carefully distinguishes the Kingdom from any specific political configuration. Lumen gentium affirms that the Kingdom is made present above all in the words, works, and very person of Jesus Christ ; John Paul II formulated this even more explicitly: the Kingdom is not primarily “a concept, a doctrine, or a program,” but a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth (John Paul II, 1990, no. 18). 

Therefore, the historical expression “social reign of Jesus Christ,” while theologically intelligible within its context, occupies a much less central place in magisterial discourse today. This does not mean that the Gospel lacks political, economic, and cultural consequences. It means that these consequences cannot be identified with a regime, a party, or a contingent program. Gaudium et spes expressly distinguishes temporal progress from the growth of the Kingdom, even while acknowledging the relationship between the two, and affirms the legitimate plurality of political solutions (Second Vatican Council, 1965b, nos. 39, 75–76). 

It is important to clarify here: the Constitution Gaudium et spes teaches that the Church does not identify with any political community or system; a clear distinction must be made between what Christians do in their own name, under their civic responsibility, and what they do in the name of the Church. The subsequent “Doctrinal Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Political Participation of Catholics” even affirms that there can be a legitimate plurality of parties in which Catholics participate. Therefore, no particular party should claim to be the exclusive political expression of Catholicism (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2002). 

This does not mean falling into relativism. Ideologies remain dangerous when they reduce the complexity of reality to a single explanation and end up sacrificing human dignity to a historical project. The Mexican experience is a dramatic reminder that a state convinced it possesses a monopoly on modernity and progress can end up violating fundamental freedoms. Catholics have historical reasons to be especially vigilant against any contemporary form of religious coercion, whether it comes from governments, cultural movements, or social majorities. Dignitatis humanae clearly establishes that religious freedom belongs to the person by virtue of their dignity and must be recognized as a human right, not as a privilege granted by the state. 

Finally, there is a perhaps less considered lesson. The ecclesial culture of the early 20th century was strongly marked by an anti-modern paradigm . Since the modernist crisis of the beginning of the century, a significant part of Catholicism tended to interpret modernity as a chain of errors: rationalism, liberalism, secularization, socialism, and relativism appeared as stages in the same departure from Christian truth. Recent research on Vatican II shows the extent to which this paradigm was still present in the conciliar debates and how the majority of the Council ultimately distanced itself from it (Blanchard, 2025). 

Vatican II did not canonize modernity. Gaudium et spes acknowledges its greatness and its miseries, its enormous progress and its unsettling contradictions. But instead of interpreting it as a homogeneous bloc to be rejected, it proposed scrutinizing the “signs of the times” and discerning them in the light of the Gospel. In a way, its method recalls the Gospel image of the wheat and the tares: in human history, truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, opportunities for growth and threats to dignity coexist and require discernment. The Church’s relationship with the world thus began to be increasingly formulated through the category of dialogue , a conciliar shift whose importance continues to be recognized by contemporary theological research (Paparella, 2026). 

This perspective continues to this day. In Fratelli tutti, Francis emphasized social friendship, encounter, and the capacity to transform conflicts without turning the adversary into an enemy (Francis, 2020). Leo XIV explicitly took up this path. From the early days of his pontificate, he spoke of “building bridges through dialogue and encounter”; in 2026, he warned against partial views of reality that fuel confrontation and presented dialogue, social cohesion, and the patient pursuit of the common good as alternatives to polarization (Leo XIV, 2025, 2026).

Therefore, remembering the Cristero War should not serve to reconstruct the trenches of 1926 today. It should serve to better understand what happens when political power invades consciousness, but also what happens when an ideological reading of history transforms all differences into irreconcilable enmity.

The image of those bells remains eloquent. In 1926 they fell silent, and a part of Mexico took up arms. In 1929 they rang again, but peace was still far from being true reconciliation. It took years of suffering, a second insurgency, and a slow process of mutual learning for Church and State to understand that neither could build the future by eliminating the other.

Perhaps this is the most valuable lesson learned a century later: religious freedom needs just laws, but coexistence needs more than laws. It needs a culture capable of recognizing the other, of distinguishing without excluding, of defending convictions without absolutizing contingent solutions, and of building bridges even where memory holds deep wounds.

Remembering those who suffered and died holy deaths during religious persecution is a duty of justice. Turning their memory into a tool for further polarization, however, would be to fail to grasp the lesson their history teaches us.

If we look closely at the Church’s most recent teaching on conflicts and wars, we can understand two important things. Legitimate self-defense retains moral relevance when the inalienable dignity of the human person is seriously threatened and demands a necessary and proportionate response. At the same time, violence cannot become a method, a permanent strategy, or a mechanism of power. On the contrary, it is necessary to proclaim truth, goodness, and beauty in a “disarmed and disarming” way, to make room for what is specifically Christian.

What is specifically Christian is a topic that goes beyond these considerations and would warrant further discussion. Here, it suffices to recall that Jesus Christ freely gave his life for all. This form of love, which includes even the most implacable enemies, is an educational path in which the saints, and especially the martyrs, are our primary role models.

Our martyrs are not only witnesses to an unjust death, but to a form of love that overcomes the violent, not in the realm of force, but in that of truth and goodness, always superior to any power play.

To even begin to reflect on these matters, our convictions about the person, freedom, and conscience must transcend the merely theoretical realm and become a way of life. Christianity teaches us that every person is a true end and, therefore, should never be used as a mere means (Guerra, 2002). Freedom is voluntary obedience to the truth, not mere indecisiveness in the face of multiple options. Conscience is the sanctuary and the ultimate tribunal where you and I can choose to transcend the demands of justice and open ourselves to the possibility of forgiveness and its supernatural consequences. These are never merely personal in nature, but directly impact the ultimate fulfillment of the meaning of history.

When I think about these things, I always remember a comment from one of my dearest professors, Rocco Buttiglione, a very close friend of John Paul II. According to his testimony, Pope Wojtyła once told him something like this: “In defending the cause of truth or the cause of Jesus Christ, blood may sometimes be shed. However, the important thing is to understand that, as Christians, we must be willing to shed our own blood before that of our enemies.”

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