MADRID, Spain.
On November 11, numerous social and educational centers bearing the name of Blessed Maria Victoria Díez y Bustos de Molina will celebrate the feast of their patroness. This is a time to remember a woman, a teacher, like many others of the thirties in Spain, "the girl next door," with nothing striking on the outside, but singular and very special inwardly.
A story like many others with an unusual end
She was a strong woman according to the type of strong females envisioned by Pedro Poveda, inspired by those who accompanied Christ to the end and especially his sorrowful and faithful mother. Her ideal model had been formed by Poveda: Maria Josefa Segovia, first President of the Teresian Association and an irreplaceable partner in the founding days. Josefa and Victoria communicated by mail frequently and the first was the tenacious and early propagandist of the life of the teacher and the sponsor of the first biography of Victoria, which was written by Maria Josefa Grosso who knew the martyr teacher well. That was so timely that the testimonies collected right after the facts gave an important boost to the beatification process of Victoria.
She was a little woman, not very gifted as she put it, in poor health, a silk wrapping of her working, artistic, and amiable spirit. What does she offer to us today in the XXI century? Pretty much. Victoria has a message for today because she only did what she had to do but pushed to the limit of total surrender in everything: in prayer, in collaboration with the Church, in dedication to her students, in attention to the forgotten of the village, in friendship with all regardless of their ideology, in her contagious joy, in good fun, in her Andalusian religiosity which is very sensory, very human, very much incarnate.
Victoria knew what was going to happen and did not duck responsibility. She did not run. She did not even hide her assiduity and collaboration in the life of the parish, and her friendship with the pastor and his sisters. She did not stop her activities with Catholic Action, founded by Father Antonio Molina, or her association with catechists. She did not stop doing good to the unemployed village women, teaching them jobs, bringing the people to representatives of a famous brand of sewing machines so that they would give a course that could then be used to employ these women. She did not stop teaching literacy to adults in Hornachuelos on Sunday. She was the soul of the people and everyone acknowledged this, years later, when the drums of war subsided and calm returned to that village which was massacred twice, first by one side and then by the other.
Then, Victoria’s eternal lesson is: firmness, fidelity to principles, patience with those who are slower and who are enemies, endeavor to follow an ideal till death, joy like salt that seasons and like light that illumines around, without hiding the lamp under a bushel.
Congratulations to all who celebrate in Seville, where she was born, in Cheles and Hornachuelos where she gave life lessons, in Córdoba where her body is preserved in a crypt and the training center for catechists and theologians is named after her, and many other places that, whether they bear her name or not, they have chosen her as an inspiration for their labors.
In a few days, the life of Victoria Diez will be published online. She was born on November 11, 1903 and was executed by a popular picket on August 12, 1936, at the Mina del Rincón, after a heroic journey with seventeen men. This journey has been told and sung many a time.
Nieves San Martín
| Victoria Diez Bustos de Molina was born in Seville on November 11, 1903. She died in Hornachuelos, Córdoba, on August 12, 1936, a witness to the faith and a victim of the violence of those years. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 10,1993 at St. Peter's Square, Rome. |