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Donato Jiménez BibianoBlessed martyr, 1873–1936
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His name does not appear in the 1936 death record. Where it should have gone, the judge at Fuencarral wrote: “an unidentified man”.

Donato Jiménez Bibiano

Redemptorist priest and missionary. Martyr.

He was born in Alaejos, in the Tierra de Medina region of Castile, and spent more than thirty years preaching missions in the towns and villages of Castile, Navarre and Galicia. In September 1936 he was arrested in Madrid for being a religious, held in the checa in Calle Fomento and, five days later, killed on the road to France. He was buried without a name. Seventy years later, the details in the death record and the photograph stapled to it made it possible to give his name back to him. Since 2022 the Church has honoured him as a Blessed.

Born
21 Mar 1873Alaejos, Valladolid
Martyred
18 Sep 1936Road to France, km 12 (Fuencarral, Madrid)
Beatified
22 Oct 2022Almudena Cathedral, Madrid
Read his life

Who he was

He is one of the twelve Redemptorists of Madrid beatified on 22 October 2022: the group headed by Fr Vicente Renuncio Toribio, six priests and six brothers from the communities of Perpetual Help and San Miguel. Donato belonged to the San Miguel community, in the Madrid district of La Latina, where he had arrived that same summer.

What we know of him comes above all from three writings: the account of his life that he wrote himself as a novice, in 1893; the letter that his childhood friend from the same town, Fr Saturnino Martín Lucas, wrote in 1944; and the testimony of those who shared cell number 5 of the Fomento checa with him.

This site brings together what those sources allow us to say. Wherever a sentence appears in quotation marks, it is a quotation from an identified document, translated from the Spanish; its source is given in the margin of each page and in the sources section.

Congregation
Most Holy Redeemer (C.Ss.R.)
Profession
8 September 1893
Ordination
27 May 1899, Astorga
Community in 1936
San Miguel Arcángel, Madrid
Liturgical memorial
6 November
Portrait of Fr Donato Jiménez Bibiano wearing a biretta and spectacles, 1915.
In 1915, the year he arrived in Pamplona. Photograph from the Redemptorist Missionaries, restored and reproduced with their permission. There are more in the gallery.

I shall be yours for ever, and I shall remain faithful to you until death.

Donato Jiménez at twenty, addressing Christ and the Virgin near the end of the account of his life he wrote in the novitiate at Nava del Rey in 1893. Forty-three years later he was killed for being a religious.

The journey

Six sections. They can be read in order or on their own.

  1. IHis lifeThe mischievous boy from Alaejos, the mission that changed everything, the night ride to Nava del Rey and more than thirty years as a missionary and superior.
  2. IIThe martyrdomTwo months in hiding, the arrest in Calle Mayor, cell number 5 of the Fomento checa and the early hours of 18 September 1936.
  3. IIITimelineSixty-three years of life, and what came after, in twenty-five dates. Each one with its source.
  4. IVThe TwelveHe did not die alone. The twelve Redemptorist martyrs of Madrid and their beatification in the Almudena in 2022.
  5. VMemoryHe has no known grave. Where he is remembered, who kept his memory alive, and the photo gallery.
  6. VISources and prayerThe original documents of the cause, the bibliography and a prayer asking for his intercession.

Pray with him

In cell number 5 he devoted himself to lifting the spirits of the most anguished prisoners with the consolations of faith. Since 2022 the Church has permitted him to be invoked publicly as a Blessed. Ask him for that same faith in your own life.

Go to the prayer