On Friday, May 5, 2023, at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the ceremony for the opening of the boxes of the Acts of the diocesan process of the Cause of beatification and canonization of Marta Obregón, by way of martyrdom, took place.
It was a simple but solemn, moving and emotional ceremony. This step marks the resumption of the in-depth research carried out in this second phase. The new postulator of the Roman phase, Dr. Cristiana Marinelli, the priest postulator of the diocesan phase, Mr. Saturnino Lopez, and Mr. Carlos Metola, representative of the plaintiff of the Cause (The Neocatechumenal Way) were present.
Marta Obregón was a cheerful young woman, with great vitality, who belonged to a Neocatechumenal community in the parish of San Martín de Porres in Burgos. She was one of the cantors of her community.
When she was 22 years old and in her last year of journalism studies, she “stood up” for evangelization at the Beginning of the Year convivence, that is, she offered to be sent to any part of the world as an itinerant missionary. During the last months of her life she sought to do the will of God, and in her “echoes” and “prayers” in the celebrations of her community she often repeated: “Lord, let it be done“.
On the night of January 21, 1992, she was accosted in the doorway of her home, abducted and brutally taken to an open field outside the city to be raped by her murderer. Marta heroically defended the virtue of chastity until her death. She received 14 stab wounds (the same as those of St. Maria Goretti), one of them directly to the heart, and died on January 21 (liturgical feast of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr).
In her parish and throughout the city of Burgos, as well as in many places in Spain and the world, the “fame of holiness and martyrdom” of this happy and jovial young woman, who spoke openly of God’s action, has reached her parish. In a letter written by Marta shortly before her death, she wrote these profound words about her life:
“I am realizing something: that I must live in the present, and only then, will I be able to find out what was before, which is your WILL, and always THE BEST for me of everything, of ALL that the world has to offer me.”
We thank God for this new step taken by the Church with Marta Obregón, which increases our hope. In a world where impurity grows and ruins the work of the Creator, the example of Marta Obregón, with her heroic defense of her chastity, becomes a light for the young people and adolescents of the 21st century who, bombarded by the ideology of gender and the trivialization of sex, many of whom do not know the dignity of the body and the value of virginity, causing them so much suffering. Let us pray to the Lord that this process may continue with diligence and serve as an example and consolation to the young people of the Neocatechumenal Way and of the whole Church.