EWTN News reports that on June 18, 2026, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — an organ of the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican — recognized the “martyrdom” of Juan Torres Torres and 19 companion priests from the Diocese of Ibiza, killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The same decree recognized the “heroic virtues” of Clara Andreu y Malferit, a 17th-century Hieronymite nun. The article, sourced from ACI Prensa and dated June 19, 2026, presents these recognitions as straightforward acts of piety, noting that the diocesan process began in 2008 under “Bishop” Vicente Juan Segura and wound through the bureaucratic machinery of the post-conciliar structures for nearly two decades. Father Juan Torres, born in 1912, was martyred at age 25; the eldest, José Tur Bennassar, was 77. The Diocese of Ibiza celebrates their feast on September 13, the date most of the group died at Ibiza Castle. The article further notes that Sister Clara’s body is “incorrupt” and that she was once censured for mystical experiences before being vindicated. This entire apparatus of “canonization” and “beatification” is not merely a bureaucratic exercise but a calculated instrument of the conciar revolution — a factory producing counterfeit saints to lend divine legitimacy to a church that has abandoned the Faith.
The Fundamental Question: Who Has the Authority to Declare Martyrs?
Before examining the specific cases presented in this article, one must confront the foundational issue that the conciar sect systematically evades: does the post-conciliar structure possess any authority whatsoever to canonize saints, beatify martyrs, or make binding declarations in matters of faith and morals?
The answer, from the perspective of integral Catholic theology, is an unequivocal no. The conciliar sect, beginning with John XXIII’s convocation of Vatican II, has progressively and manifestly departed from the Catholic Faith. It has embraced religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae, directly condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 79: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization”), false ecumenism (the Abu Dhabi Declaration, the Assisi gatherings), the democratization of the Church, and the cult of man (Gaudium et Spes). These are not peripheral disciplinary changes but substantive heresies that strike at the very nature of the Church, the unique salvific mission of Christ, and the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation.
As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice (Book II, Chapter 30): “A Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” This is not a fringe theological opinion but the common teaching of the Church’s greatest doctors. Wernz and Vidal in Ius Canonicum confirm: “By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff, should he fall into it, is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.”
Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law is equally clear: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration by reason of tacit resignation, recognized by the law itself, if the cleric: … 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” The post-conciliar occupants of the Vatican have publicly and repeatedly defected from the Catholic faith. Their “decrees,” “recognitions,” and “canonizations” are therefore null, void, and of no effect — a point underscored by Pope Paul IV’s Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, which declares that any promotion of one who has defected from the Faith is “null, void, and of no effect,” even if carried out with the unanimous assent of all Cardinals.
The article’s casual reference to “the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints” and “the Vatican” as though these were legitimate Catholic authorities is itself a symptom of the disease. These are organs of the conciliar sect, a paramasonic structure that has occupied the physical buildings of the Vatican but has emptied them of Catholic content. To treat their declarations as authoritative is to participate in the great deception.
The Spanish Civil War Martyrs: A Complex Reality Exploited by Apostates
The article presents the 20 Ibiza priests as straightforward martyrs — men “killed out of hatred for the faith” (odium fidei). This classification, even if historically accurate in some individual cases, is weaponized by the conciar sect for purposes that have nothing to do with the glory of God and everything to do with the legitimization of their revolution.
The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was a conflict of extraordinary complexity. It is true that thousands of clergy and religious were murdered by Republican and anarchist forces, and many of these individuals did indeed die in odium fidei. The Church before 1958 recognized this reality clearly. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (1933) and his allocution to Spanish refugees (1936), condemned the persecution and honored those who suffered for the Faith. The Spanish bishops issued a collective letter in 1937 documenting the persecution in detail.
However, the war was not simply a matter of “Catholic Spain versus atheist communism.” As the document on false Fatima apparitions notes, “the message focuses on external threats (communism), omitting the main danger: modernist apostasy within the Church since the beginning of the 20th century.” This observation applies with full force to the exploitation of the Spanish martyrs. The conciar sect waves the banner of the Spanish martyrs to present itself as the continuator of the “Church of the Martyrs,” while simultaneously embracing the very modernism that St. Pius X identified as “the synthesis of all heresies” in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907).
Consider the grotesque irony: the same conciar structures that “recognize” the martyrs of 1936 are led by Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), a man who has never condemned Vatican II’s errors, who participates in the Novus Ordo liturgy that represents a rupture with the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice, and who operates within a “church” that has institutionalized religious indifferentism. The martyrs died defending the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church — the Church that the conciar sect has systematically dismantled. To invoke their witness in support of the conciar revolution is blasphemy.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the progress of sciences requires a reform of the concept of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, Revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption” (Proposition 64). This is precisely what the conciar sect has done — and it dares to claim the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War as witnesses to this apostasy.
The “Canonization” Factory: A Statistical Indictment
The article’s offhand mention that this is merely the latest in a long series of “martyrdom recognitions” — referencing related articles about Leo XIV authorizing “beatification of 80 civil war martyrs” and “declaring 174 new martyrs from Nazi persecution” — reveals the industrial scale of this operation. The conciar sect has been engaged in a massive program of “canonizations” and “beatifications” that dwarfs anything in the history of the Church.
Under John Paul II (a heretic and apostate by any pre-conciliar standard), the number of beatifications and canonizations exploded. This was not a sign of renewed holiness but of lowered standards and ideological selection. The purpose was threefold:
First, to create a veneer of sanctity and continuity for a church that has in fact broken radically with Tradition. By “canonizing” large numbers of individuals, the conciar sect creates the impression that the Holy Spirit is guiding their enterprise — when in fact the Holy Spirit cannot guide a church that teaches error.
Second, to promote the conciar agenda through selective emphasis. Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War are highlighted because they can be used to promote a narrative of “persecution and resistance” that flatters the conciar self-image, while the far greater persecution of the Faith by the conciar sect itself — through the suppression of the Traditional Mass, the silencing of orthodox theologians, the corruption of seminaries, and the systematic destruction of Catholic doctrine — is ignored.
Third, to create “new models of holiness” that reflect conciar values rather than traditional Catholic sanctity. The “saints” of the conciar era are disproportionately drawn from founders of social-action organizations, ecumenical activists, and promoters of the “spirit of Vatican II” — not from contemplatives, dogmatic theologians, or defenders of the Faith against heresy.
The article’s reference to the 15-year study of Clara Andreu’s case is presented as evidence of careful discernment. In reality, it is evidence of the paralysis and bureaucratic bloat of the conciar structures. The pre-conciliar Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, was capable of discerning genuine sanctity with far greater efficiency and far less paperwork. The delay is not a sign of prudence but of a system that has lost the capacity to recognize true holiness because it has redefined holiness in naturalistic terms.
The Case of Clara Andreu: Mysticism Under Suspicion
The article’s treatment of Sister Clara Andreu y Malferit (1596–1628) is particularly revealing. It notes that she was “censured ‘for the spiritual experiences of a mystical nature she claimed to have and had committed to writing’ at the request of Bishop Baltasar de Borja of Mallorca” but that “following a special visit by the Franciscan Father Figuerola, spiritual peace was restored.”
This brief passage raises serious questions that the article, in its uncritical conciar framework, does not even consider. The pre-conciliar Church was extremely cautious about private revelations and mystical experiences. The Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress” (Proposition 5). The Church’s criteria for evaluating mystical phenomena were rigorous, requiring the exclusion of natural causes, the orthodoxy of any associated doctrines, and the genuine spiritual fruits in the mystic’s life.
The fact that Sister Clara was censured for her mystical experiences is not, in itself, evidence of injustice. Many genuine mystics were initially misunderstood by ecclesiastical authorities — but the Church’s caution was a safeguard against deception, both diabolical and self-inflicted. The article’s implication that the censure was merely an obstacle to be overcome, and that the “incorrupt” body vindicates her claims, reflects the conciar tendency to privilege extraordinary phenomena over doctrinal orthodoxy. This is precisely the error that St. John of the Cross warned against in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, where he cautioned that even genuine mystical gifts can become occasions of spiritual pride and deception if not submitted to the rigorous judgment of the Church.
Moreover, the article’s mention that her body is “incorrupt” is presented as evidence of holiness. While incorruptibility can be a sign of sanctity, it is not definitive proof. The Church has never taught that incorruptibility alone establishes a reputation for holiness. The conciar emphasis on such phenomena — rather than on the candidate’s doctrinal orthodoxy, fidelity to the Church’s teaching, and the traditional marks of sanctity (heroic virtue, miracles worked through the candidate’s intercession) — reveals a superstitious and sentimental approach to the faith that is far removed from the rigorous intellectualism of the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
The Linguistic Register: Bureaucratic Piety as Camouflage
The language of the article is revealing in its banality. Phrases like “the diocesan phase of the beatification process,” “the process was validated,” “the positio,” “historical consultants,” “theological consultants,” and “member cardinals and bishops” reduce the solemn act of recognizing a martyr to a bureaucratic procedure indistinguishable from a corporate compliance review.
This is not accidental. The conciar sect has systematically replaced the language of faith with the language of process. Where the pre-conciliar Church spoke of “the judgment of the Church,” “the seal of martyrdom,” “the crown of glory,” and “the intercession of the saints,” the conciar structures speak of “dicasteries,” “consultants,” “validation,” and “review.” This linguistic shift reflects a profound theological transformation: the conciar sect no longer understands itself as the Mystical Body of Christ exercising a divine mandate, but as a human institution managing a portfolio of causes.
The article’s tone is uniformly positive and celebratory, presenting the recognition of these martyrs as an unambiguous good. There is no critical examination of the conciar sect’s authority, no questioning of the criteria used, no acknowledgment that the same structures that “recognize” martyrs also promote heretics, suppress the Traditional Mass, and engage in syncretistic worship. This uncritical tone is characteristic of conciar media, which functions not as a journalistic enterprise but as a public relations apparatus for the post-conciliar revolution.
The Omission That Condemns: Silence About the True Church
The most damning aspect of this article is what it does not say. There is no mention of the crisis of authority in the Catholic Church. No acknowledgment that the post-conciliar occupants of the Vatican have taught heresy. No recognition that the Traditional Latin Mass — the Mass at which these martyrs worshipped, the Mass for which many of them died — has been effectively suppressed by the very structures that now claim to honor them. No reference to the fact that the conciar “Eucharist” is, by the admission of many theologians (including the “conservative” Cardinal Ratzinger in his 1993 letter to Bishop Pueo), theologically different from the Mass of all ages.
The article treats the conciar sect as though it were the Catholic Church, and it treats the Catholic Church as though it were merely the conciar sect with a longer history. This is the fundamental deception of our time, and every article published by EWTN News, ACI Prensa, Vatican News, and similar outlets reinforces it.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “rulers of states… should fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” The martyrs of the Spanish Civil War died for this truth — the truth that Christ the King reigns over all nations, that the Catholic Church is the one true Church, and that there is no salvation outside of her. The conciar sect has abandoned every one of these truths. To claim these martyrs as witnesses to the conciar revolution is to make them witnesses against it.
Conclusion: The Martyrs Deserve Better Than This
The 20 priests of Ibiza who died in 1936 may well have been genuine martyrs. The Church — the true Church, not the conciar sect — will ultimately judge their cause. But the recognition of their martyrdom by the post-conciliar structures is not an act of piety; it is an act of appropriation. The conciar sect seizes upon the witness of those who died for the Faith to legitimize a system that has betrayed the Faith.
The faithful who wish to honor these martyrs must do so outside the conciar structures, in communion with the true Church — the Church that preserves the Traditional Mass, the unchanging catechism, and the integral Catholic Faith. They must reject the “canonizations” and “beatifications” of the conciar sect as null and void, recognizing them for what they are: instruments of a psychological operation designed to keep the faithful within the orbit of a church that has become, in the words of Our Lady of La Salette (whose message the conciar sect has systematically suppressed), “the Synagogue of Satan.”
The martyrs of the Spanish Civil War died defending the Church of Christ. The least we can do is refuse to let their witness be hijacked by that Church’s enemies.
Source:
Vatican recognizes martyrdom of 20 priests killed during Spanish Civil War (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 19.06.2026