Our Lady of the Mount Church in Cicero is now home to relics of three Mexican martyrs killed during the Cristero War in the late 1920s, Sts. Turibio Romo, José Luis Sánchez del Río and José María Robles.

The relics will be permanently installed in a new altar at the completion of ongoing renovations. 

“I hope by their intercession people will wake up again,” said Father Juan Luis Andrade-Limon, pastor. “I hope by having the relics people will be willing to come and say thank you for a favor they received or maybe ask for a favor.”

But there is more.

“It is also a reminder to all of us that holiness, sainthood, is something that we all can achieve. They were ordinary people,” said Andrade-Limon, who has a personal devotion to Robles and served with his Sacred Heart sisters in Guadalajara, Mexico.

St. Turibio Romo was a parish priest in Jalisco, Mexico, who was shot and killed by soldiers who came to his home during the anti-clerical persecutions in 1928. He was 27. He was known for his emphasis on catechesis and the Eucharist and today he is beloved by immigrants coming to the United States from Mexico.

St. José Luis Sánchez del Río was just 14 when he was killed by Mexican soldiers. Too young to join the Cristero rebellion, he volunteered as a flag bearer and was captured during a battle.

Soldiers asked him to renounce his faith and the Cristero cause, but he refused. Before killing him, soldiers tortured the teen, cutting off the skin on the bottom of his feet and forcing him to walk through the town.

St. José María Robles was a diocesan priest who served in Guadalajara and had a particular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He established a community of women religious there devoted to the Sacred Heart.

Like many priests during the war, Robles was tracked and eventually arrested and hanged. Before he was killed, it is said Robles knelt down, prayed and put the noose over his own head to spare any solider from blame. He was 39.

Altars used for the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice contain relics of saints. This harkens back to the tradition of the early Christians to celebrate Mass in the catacombs in Rome on the graves of martyrs. 

There will be one noticeable difference at Our Lady of the Mount. Instead of embedding the relics in the top of the altar, where they are rarely seen by anyone other than priests or liturgical ministers, the relics will be visible to everyone through a window in its base on its front side.

This was a stipulation from the dioceses that gave Andrade-Limon the relics for St. Toribio Romo and St. José Luis Sánchez del Río, he said.

The relics now are on display for public devotion at the church.

Andrade-Limon said he hopes having the relics will increase participation in the liturgy. When the parish holds evenings of catechesis around the symbolism and meaning of the altar in the celebration of the Mass — something that is part of the church’s tradition around altar dedications — he will include catechesis on the three martyrs.

All three saints were martyred during the Cristero War in Mexico, a war that Andrade-Limon’s grandmother lived through.

“She used to tell us how she saw people running through the village, going and getting hidden because they were persecuted, how the priests used to celebrate Mass out in the wilderness at the middle of the night, so they didn’t get caught by the soldiers,” he said. “It is very close to us, this event.”

Everyone is called to be a saint, but sometimes the saints seem extraordinary, Andrade-Limon noted. He said some of the saints, like St. Teresa of Avila, Padre Pio and St. Francis of Assisi, have mystical and profound experiences that may not fit with our own.

By having these relics, he hopes to show people that anyone can be a saint.

“Sometimes saints seem to us somehow higher or unreachable,” he said. “So when we see these people [Romo, del Río and Robles], in a very ordinary way of living just doing what they were supposed to do, fulfilling their obligations as a Christian, as priests — two of them — they were granted this gift of martyrdom, but now the church has given them to us that it is possible for all of us.”