Rafael Guízar y Valencia


Rafael Guízar y Valencia was a Mexican Catholic bishop who was active during the Mexican Revolution. Named Bishop of Xalapa in 1919, he was driven out of his diocese and forced to live the remainder of his life in hiding in Mexico City.
Guizar's body was exhumed in 1950, twelve years after his death, and witnesses have said it had not decayed.
Pope Benedict XVI canonized Guízar on 15 October 2006.

Uncle of Marcial Maciel

Guízar was the uncle of Marcial Maciel, who became a priest and founded the Legion of Christ. According to investigative journalist Jason Berry and former Hartford Courant religion writer Gerald Renner:
The day before Bishop Guizar died, he had been heard shouting angrily at his eighteen-year-old nephew, Marcial Maciel. He was giving Maciel a dressing-down after two women had come to the bishop's house to complain about Maciel, who was their neighbor. Father Orozco, who was among the original group of boys to found the Legion of Christ in 1941, said he heard the women had complained about the "noise" Maciel was making with children he had brought into his home to teach religion. He said that the seminary officials blamed Maciel for his uncle's heart attack and subsequent death.

The incident would take on new significance decades after Guízar's death, when Pope Benedict XVI ordered Maciel to retire to a life of prayer and penance after a papal commission completed its investigation into his sexual misconduct with Legion seminarians who were minors at the time. Suspended from priestly faculties by Pope Benedict, Maciel did not attend his uncle's canonization. Maciel was also discovered, in 2009, to have fathered possibly as many as six children while under the vow of chastity.

Veneration

Guízar was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 29 January 1995. He was canonized on 15 October 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.