Tea at Trianon: Nurses to be Beatified as Martyrs in Spain

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Nurses to be Beatified as Martyrs in Spain

From Crux:

Three Red Cross nurses are to be beatified as martyrs in Spain, 85 years after they were raped and shot while caring for wounded Civil War soldiers, having refused to renounce their Catholic faith.

“These martyrs were not linked to either side — the Red Cross went wherever it was summoned, regardless of who was in control,” said Bishop Jesús Fernández González of Astorga. “Nor did they carry weapons, or use even words to attack anyone. They were simply moved by human compassion and Christian charity, knowing the risks and dangers when signing up as volunteers.”

His message was published ahead of the May 29 beatification of María Pilar Gullón Yturriaga, Octavia Iglesias Blanco and Olga Pérez-Monteserín Núñez at Astorga’s Santa Maria cathedral. Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes, will celebrate the beatification Mass. (Read more.)