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Join us for "Time-Traveling Saints: Mexico's Cristero Martyrs from 1926 to 2026." Almost a century ago, Catholic rebels in Mexico launched a bloody rebellion against the Revolutionary government. The conflict that erupted, known as the Cristero War, raged from 1926 to 1929 and claimed some 90,000 lives. Out of this violence emerged a powerful legacy: the Martyrs of the Cristero War, canonized saints venerated by Mexican communities on both sides of the border for defending their faith to the death. Today, these saints are inspiring some surprising new patterns of devotion in physical and digital spaces, not only among Mexican Catholics, but also among traditionalist, integralist, and right-wing Catholic groups in the United States. This talk explores how Mexico's Cristero saints have become transnational symbols in the religious, political, and cultural landscapes of the 21st century. 

Speaker

Julia Young, Ph.D. is a historian of migration, Mexico and Latin America, and Catholicism at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She is the author of "Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War" (Oxford, 2015). She has published scholarly articles in The Americas, The Catholic Historical Review, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, and the Journal on Migration and Human Security. She is currently writing a new book about Mexican Catholicism, and she frequently writes for the media about migration, border issues, and Catholic immigration history.