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BL. CEFERINO GIMENEZ MALLA, MARTYR - 4 MAY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MAY

Saints celebrated on the 4th of May

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

BL. CEEFERINO GIMENEZ MALLA, MARTYR 

Blessed Ceferino Gimenez Malla, patron of Roma [Romani, travellers], was martyred because he tried to defend a priest.

He was born to Juan Jimenez and Josefa Malla, a Catholic Romani family, in Spain. Sources differ as to whether the year was 1861 or 1865. He was baptised in Fraga, Huesca Province. His father was a cattle-trader. The family usually waited out the winter on farms in places farmers set aside for them, or else they rented a cottage for a few months. Ceferino often went hungry. Accompanying his father, he became conversant in Catalan as well as Romany. 

HE GOT MARRIED

About the age of twenty, he wed Teresa Jimenez Castro. They were happily married for forty years. They had no children, but looked after his younger brothers and sisters. Known for his honesty, Ceferino became something of a leader in the Roma community of Barbastro and the surrounding area. People would seek him out for advice, and to mediate family quarrels. He also resolved disputes between Romani and Spanish people.

HE RESOLVED DISPUTES

One day a local landowner, suffering from tuberculosis, passed out on the street. Heedless of the danger of contagion, Malla hoisted the man on his shoulders and carried him home. The grateful family rewarded him with a sum sufficient to start a business buying and selling surplus mules which the French army no longer needed after World War I. 

HE BECAME A CATECHIST

Bl. Gimenez Malla was described as a pleasant, good-natured, tall, thin man carefully dressed and distinguished looking. Although illiterate, after his wife died, Bl. Gimenez began a career as a catechist under the guidance of a priest-teacher, Don Nicholas Santos de Otto, teaching both Romani and Spanish children. 

HE JOINED THE FRANCISCAN THIRD ORDER

He had a gift for catechising children by telling them stories. He became a member of the Franciscan Third order, the Society of St Vincent de Paul and, participated in Thursday night Eucharistic Adoration.

HE TRIED TO DEFEND A PRIEST

In July 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Bl. Gimenez Malla tried to defend a Catholic priest from Republican militiamen. They both were arrested and imprisoned in a former Capuchin monastery, converted into a wartime prison. An acquaintance advised him that he would probably be released if he gave up his rosary, but he refused. A Romani legend has it that the soldiers asked him if he had weapons, and that he answered: "Yes, and here it is", while displaying his rosary. On August 9, Bl. Gimenez and others were taken by lorry to a cemetery and shot. He reportedly died holding the rosary in his hands, and shouting: "Long live Christ the King!". He was buried in a mass grave; his body has never been found. He was beatified on May 4, 1997 by Pope John Paul II. 

(Information from Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceferino_Gim%C3%A9nez_Malla)


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