Viva Cristo Rey!

Reading a book the other night, I stumbled on Blessed Miguel Pro, a martyr for the faith. Regardless your beliefs, you have to admit, Fr. Pro was amazing. He was falsely accused of conspiring to assassinate Mexico's anti-Catholic President Calles. After praying, he blessed the firing squad then died with arms outstretched with a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other.

On Nov. 22, 1927, a man dressed in street clothes was led through a crowd of photographers and politicians on his way to a firing squad in Mexico City. The photographers were present for this illegal execution — there had been no trial or even formal charges — because the Mexican president, Plutarco Elias Calles, the most rabidly anti-Catholic leader in the world at the time, wanted them to record the humiliation of a man desperately pleading for his own life. Calles badly miscalculated. The man walked calmly to the place of his death, asked to be allowed to pray, and then, in a voice neither defiant nor desperate, intoned the words Viva Cristo Rey! — "Long Live Christ the King!"
Through photographs distributed worldwide, the Jesuit priest Miguel Augustin Pro thus became the most famous martyr in Mexico’s anti-Catholic revolution early in the twentieth century.
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This is the police photo taken the day of his execution.