Atilano Cruz Alvarado
Feast: 1 July (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Atilano Cruz Alvarado was born at Ahuetita de Abajo, Jalisco, on 5 October 1901. He was ordained when being a priest was treated as the worst crime a Mexican could commit, in a ravine where the archbishop and the seminary were hiding, and served the parish of Cuquío.
Eleven months later, while exercising his ministry as best he could, he was killed. He was one of the 25 martyrs of the Mexican persecution, led by St Cristóbal Magallanes, most of them priests killed for exercising their ministry.
The miracles
As a martyr he was raised to the altars without a miracle.
Why that counted as sanctity
A young priest ordained in hiding and killed within a year.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography: Atilano Cruz Alvarado
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - beatification of 22 November 1992
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - canonisation of 21 May 2000
- Wikidata Q16530562 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
Checked against the sources listed on 22 September 2026. Corrections welcome.