Today, October 25, is the memorial of Blessed Recaredo Abad.
Recaredo was born in the Diocese of Tortosa, Spain, where he studied. He also attended the seminary in Tarragona. He was ordained priest in 1929, having been inspired by his rector, Blesed Joe Maria Peris. He was a member of the Diocesan Worker Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a vocation director at the Tarragona seminary. He then became rector of the seminary at Tortosa.
At the height of the religious persecutions of the Spanish Civil War, he was shot at the gates of the then-new cemetery at Nules, Castellón, Spain in 1936. He did not die immediately.
Recaredo was 32 when he was machine-gunned. When he fell to the ground, one of the militiamen said to him: “You, who are a priest, bless us!” Recaredo, who had fallen on his right arm and badly wounded, asked to be turned on his side and then with his free right hand, he blessed them. Then the militiaman shot him in the head.
Pope St. John Paul II beatified Recaredo in 1995.