Meet Blessed Martín Martínez Pascual, whom we celebrate his feast today,August 18th. He was a young Spanish Catholic priest and martyr of the Spanish Civil War. He was killed in 'odium fidei', out of hatred for the Catholic faith, because he refused to renounce Christ. He was born on November 11, 1910, in Valdealgorfa, Teruel, Spain, he joined the Diocesan Laborer Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and was ordained a priest on June 15, 1935, at the age of twenty-four. He taught at a vocational school and later served as a seminary instructor. When the anticlerical persecution of the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, he went into hiding, taking the Blessed Sacrament with him and continuing to minister in secret. On August 18, 1936, after learning that his father had been arrested, he voluntarily surrendered himself to the Republican militia to spare his family further harm. He was taken with other priests to a cemetery outside Valdealgorfa and executed by firing squad. Before being shot, he refused to turn his back on his executioners. He blessed them, prayed that God would forgive them, and shouted “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”). He was only twenty-five years old and had been a priest for just over a year. He was beatified as a martyr by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 1995, one of the many Spanish Civil War martyrs recognized by the Church.