Marino Blanes Giner was born at Alicante in September 1888 — 19 September according to the record followed in his cause, though some accounts give 17 September — into the Catholic life of that Mediterranean city. He was carried to the parish church of Saint Mary, the ancient mother church of Alicante, and there washed in the waters of baptism, receiving with the name of Christ the seed of the martyrdom that would crown him nearly half a century later. On 8 August 1902, still a boy, he was signed with the sacred chrism in the sacrament of Confirmation, and was thereby sealed with the Holy Spirit for the confession of the faith — a grace that would be put to its ultimate test in the last weeks of his life.
Of the long middle years of his life the sources say little; they were the hidden, ordinary years in which grace does its quiet work. He lived in Alicante among his own people, faithful to the Church of his baptism, in a city where Catholic practice would soon become a capital offence. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, an organised persecution fell upon priests, religious, and lay believers alike throughout the region of Valencia. Churches were burned, the Blessed Sacrament profaned, and men and women were hunted down for no other cause than that they were known to be Christians.
On 21 July 1936, only days after the outbreak of the persecution, armed militiamen came to his house and arrested him there. He was not seized in flight or in hiding but at his own door, at the very hearth of his daily fidelity — the place where a Christian's faith is first learned and last surrendered. There followed some seven weeks of imprisonment and uncertainty, weeks in which many of his fellow captives were taken out by night and shot, and in which each evening might be the last.
His own hour came in the night of 7–8 September 1936. He was led out and killed in hatred of the faith, giving his life rather than deny the Lord who had claimed him at the font of Santa María. It is a grace of Providence that his death fell upon the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it is on 8 September that the Church now keeps his memory: the birthday of the Mother of God became the heavenly birthday of her son.
The blood of Marino Blanes Giner was mingled with that of hundreds of others in the Valencian lands — bishops, priests, religious men and women, and lay faithful, fathers and mothers, young and old. Their cause was gathered together, and on 11 March 2001, in Saint Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II beatified him in the great company of Blessed José Aparicio Sanz and 232 companions, martyrs of the Spanish persecution. The Church thereby declared before the world that these were not casualties of politics but witnesses of Christ, who overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.
His Life teaches by its very simplicity. He wrote no books and founded no institute; he was baptised, confirmed, and faithful, and when the moment came he did not run away. That is the whole of the Gospel lived in one man.
May Blessed Marino Blanes Giner obtain for us the courage to be found faithful at our own door, and let us honour him today by renewing, without shame and without compromise, the baptismal promises we have made.
