Saint Who?
Saints Who Were Missionaries
Blessed Jesús Emilio Jaramillo Monsalve
Bishop and martyr († 1989) Feast: October 3
Jesús didn’t have to leave his native country of Colombia to become a missionary. Instead, he simply joined a religious order which had recently been founded by a Colombian bishop, Venerable Miguel Ángel Builes. The purpose of the Xavierian Missionaries of Yarumal was and still is to “spread the Good News of salvation to the most poor and marginalized.”
As a Xaverian Missionary, Jesús served as a parish priest in the rural areas of Colombia and became a chaplain at a women’s prison. Later, he served as a spiritual director and professor of theology, Greek, and Hebrew for seminarians. He was made Superior General of his order at the age of forty-three, and twenty-five years later, the pope named him a bishop.
In 1964, a violent guerilla organization began to spread in Colombia. Basing its actions on a mixture of Catholic social teaching, liberation theology, and communist theory, the group claimed to want to liberate the poor. Bishop Jesús was known for his willingness to publicly defend the rights of the poor and to oppose injustice. For that reason, he repeatedly criticized the numerous atrocities and murders that the guerillas visited on those who opposed them. The guerillas kidnapped Bishop Jesús while he was traveling in a rural district to visit parishes, and they tortured him before they executed him.
Lord Jesus Christ, grant a hunger for freedom from sin
to rich and poor alike.
