Blessed Valentín Palencia Marquina and Companions

Valentín Palencia Marquina was born at Burgos in 1871 and ordained in 1895. After his first pastoral assignments he founded a diocesan college for poor, disabled and marginalised boys, and gave more than thirty years to it; of him it was said simply that he was mercy. In summer he often took the orphaned pupils to the sea at Suances in the diocese of Santander. Four of those boys and young men died with him: Donato Rodríguez García, born in 1911, disabled from childhood, who walked with two crutches and held a diploma in piano; Germán García García, born in 1912, who had volunteered as a teacher in the college; Zacarías Cuesta Campo, born in 1916, lame in one leg, a shoemaker who studied music at the college; and Emilio Huidobro Corrales, born in 1917, who lived at the college because his stepfather had rejected him after his mother's death, and who had learned to play several instruments. In the persecution that swept Spain from 1936 they went to their summary execution for their fidelity to Christ and the Church.