José María Segura Penadés was born on 13 October 1896 at Ontinyent, in the region of Valencia, Spain. From his boyhood he showed an unmistakable attraction to the altar, and his family and pastors saw that the call was genuine. He was sent to study at the Colegio de Vocaciones Eclesiásticas de San José and afterwards entered the Seminary of Valencia, where he completed the long formation of a diocesan priest.
He was ordained on 12 June 1921. His first assignment was as coadjutor at Adzaneta de Albaida, where he remained for nearly eight years. There the character of his priesthood took shape: he was a shepherd who would not be content with the sacristy. He gathered the young men of the town into the Congregation of Saint Louis Gonzaga, and for the labourers he founded the Patronato Obrero del Sagrado Corazón, the Workers' Patronage of the Sacred Heart, putting part of his own patrimony into its foundation and sustaining its schooling, instruction, and wholesome recreation out of his own pocket. He was convinced that preaching the Gospel must be accompanied by the integral formation of the whole person — mind, hands, and heart — and he acted on that conviction at his own cost.
In 1929 he returned to his native Ontinyent as coadjutor of the parish church of Santa María, with charge of the filial church of San Miguel. Here again he gave himself to the poor, to education, and to Catholic Youth, and he directed the Ave Maria Schools. Those who knew him remembered a priest who was approachable, tireless with the young, and generous with what he had.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936 and the hunt for priests began, he did not disguise himself or deny what he was. He went on living openly as a priest, at a time when that alone was a capital offence in the eyes of those in arms. In the first days of September 1936 he was seized while travelling towards Xàtiva. He was taken into the district of Genovés, and there, on 11 September 1936, he was put to death for being a priest of Jesus Christ. He was not yet forty years old.
The Church gathered his name with those of the great company of Valencian martyrs of that persecution. The decree recognising their martyrdom was promulgated on 18 December 2000, and on 11 March 2001, in Rome, Pope John Paul II beatified him among the 233 martyrs headed by Blessed José Aparicio Sanz. His feast is kept on 11 September, the day of his martyrdom.
His life is a short and luminous argument: he spent himself on the young and the working poor while he was free, and when the choice came he refused to purchase his life by hiding his priesthood.
May Blessed José María Segura Penadés obtain for us the courage to be openly and unashamedly Christian, and imitate today his generosity by spending something of your own — time, money, attention — on someone poorer or younger than yourself.
