Manuel Izquierdo Izquierdo and companions

Manuel Izquierdo Izquierdo was born on December 9, 1853, in Castillo de Locubín, in the province of Jaén, Spain. He was ordained a priest on March 14, 1891. For several decades, he exercised his pastoral ministry in rural parishes of the region. In 1921, he was appointed pastor of the parish of Nuestra Señora de Gracia in Villardompardo, a duty he would fulfill with dedication for fifteen years, until the outbreak of the Civil War in July 1936. Despite the growing threats and the anti-clerical violence that erupted in the province of Jaén, Father Izquierdo, then an octogenarian, refused to abandon his parishioners and chose to remain faithful to his post. On September 28, 1936, revolutionary militiamen burst into his home in Villardompardo while he was sleeping. Dragged by force from his home, he suffered severe humiliations and torture. His executioners notably forced him to mount a donkey to expose him to public mockery, before savagely mutilating him. He was finally slaughtered with a barber's razor (navaja de barbero) on the road to Escañuela, in the territory of Torredonjimeno. His body, abandoned in the open, was buried clandestinely by local women in a gypsum quarry. Among his 58 companions in martyrdom are 52 other diocesan priests, 4 laymen, 1 laywoman, and a cloistered nun, Mother Isabel María de San Rafael Aranda Sánchez, O.S.C. Born on July 12, 1889, in Hinojosa del Duque, she was the abbess of the Poor Clare monastery of Santa Cruz de Martos. Expelled from her monastery on July 21, 1936, with her 26 sisters, she refused to take refuge with her family in order to continue watching over her community. Arrested on January 12, 1937, she was taken to the cemetery of Las Casillas de Martos where she was mistreated and shot at point-blank range during the night of January 12 to 13, 1937.

The beatification process was officially opened on April 9, 2016, in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Jaén, under the presidency of the then-bishop, Msgr. Ramón del Hoyo López, with Msgr. Rafael Higueras Álamo as postulator. After the closure of the diocesan phase on March 30, 2019, the file was transmitted to Rome. On June 20, 2025, Pope Leo XIV authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing the martyrdom of Manuel Izquierdo Izquierdo and his 58 companions, thus paving the way for their beatification.

The solemn ceremony of beatification took place on Saturday, December 13, 2025, in the Cathedral of the Assumption of Jaén. It was presided over by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, personal representative of Pope Leo XIV, in the presence of the Bishop of Jaén, Mgr. Sebastián Chico Martínez, and nearly 2,000 faithful. Through the apostolic letter read during the celebration, Pope Leo XIV inscribed Manuel Izquierdo Izquierdo and his companions in the book of the blessed, setting their liturgical memorial on November 6 of each year.

The testimony of Blessed Manuel Izquierdo Izquierdo and his companions is characterized by an absolute fidelity to Christ and to the Church, lived out until the supreme gift of life. Faced with hatred and violence, these martyrs did not take up arms but opposed them with the strength of love and forgiveness, dying while forgiving their executioners. As Bishop Sebastián Chico Martínez emphasized, their blood was not shed in vain: it constitutes a seed of new life and hope for the Church of Jaén, inviting contemporary believers to live their faith with courage and charity.