The martyrdom

On Sunday 19 July, the day after the military uprising that began the Spanish Civil War, the Redemptorists were celebrating the feast of their titular, the Most Holy Redeemer. That night, after supper, Fr Donato left the San Miguel residence and took refuge with his friend and fellow townsman Jerónimo Fernández Puertas, on the fourth floor of number 8, Cava Baja, where he lived with his wife, Pilar López, and their son Leopoldo. The next day the community closed the basilica, consumed the Blessed Sacrament to prevent its profanation, and dispersed. The day after that, the sacristy was in flames.

Profiles in Hispania Martyr and Testigos de la Redención, based on the notes of Fr Lucas Pérez.

He lived there for almost two months, given to recollection and prayer. He went out only to celebrate Mass at the Apostolic Nunciature or at the Palacio de la Cruzada. He remained confident, convinced it would all soon be over. At the beginning of September a rumour went round the neighbourhood that a friar was hiding at number 8. Against his friend’s wishes, he decided to leave so as not to put him at risk.

Profile in Testigos de la Redención.

On 12 September he moved to the home of Miss Lola Moreno Tobarra, on the first floor of number 59, Calle Mayor, above the Reina Madre pharmacy. Other Redemptorists had advised him to do so the previous Sunday. The next day, around midday, militiamen came to search the flat. When they saw the refugee’s luggage they said: “We’ve caught a big fish today”. They took the two of them away in two cars to the checa at number 9, Calle Fomento — one of the detention centres run by militias and political groups in Republican Madrid during the first months of the war.

Handwritten notes of Fr Lucas Pérez, with the account Lola Moreno gave after leaving the checa (APRM, Mártires, 1209102).

Lola was interrogated with indecent questions and insulted. She stood her ground, saying “that they could kill her, but that she was a Catholic, apostolic and Roman, and that she would never deny it”. They let her go. Fr Donato stayed.

Ibid.

In the basement of the checa, in cell number 5, a priest from Navarre, Jenaro Xavier Vallejos, was being held. At about five in the afternoon of the 13th he saw Fr Donato come in “in his black suit, with that calm, almost smiling bearing of his”, and thought: “He’s a friar! He can’t hide it!”. When someone asked him why he had been arrested, he answered: “Gentlemen, I am a Redemptorist religious; that is why I have been arrested”.

Statement of Jenaro Xavier Vallejos, in Hispania Martyr.

On learning that Vallejos came from Sangüesa, he confided in him: he had lived in Pamplona for fifteen years and knew his family. He told him he was carrying a diplomatic card from the Nunciature and expected to be released soon. Vallejos was so sure he would get out that he gave him a sum of money to pass on to his own family.

Ibid.

In those days he devoted himself to lifting the spirits of the most anguished prisoners with the consolations of faith. He urged them to make their peace with God and heard several confessions, “and for some it was the last confession of their lives, for they were afterwards shot”.

Ibid.

One night he was called up for questioning. He went up cheerfully and came back at midnight downcast. One of the interrogators had asked him about the Father Provincial and other religious, and had said to him: “And you’ve preached a lot in Navarre and Galicia, haven’t you? And they used to call you ‘Golden Tongue’, didn’t they?”. Fr Donato spent the following days trying to work out who that man could be who knew him so well. From what he let slip, it seems he was a former Redemptorist.

Ibid.

On the 16th Vallejos was released. The priest was left with a young prisoner, Antonio Gómez Fernández. On Vallejos’s advice the young man went up to him by the window and, while they seemed absorbed in looking at a pocket watch, made his confession. When he had finished, the priest said to him:

Testimony of Antonio Gómez Fernández in the notes of Fr Lucas Pérez, pp. 8–9.

A little later a friend went to the checa to ask after the priest. He was told that he had been set free and that the young man was already in the Cárcel Modelo prison. He went to see him there. On hearing Fr Donato’s name, Antonio Gómez was moved and could not hold back a tear: “I am so grateful to him…!”.

Ibid.

Late on the night of the 17th a militiaman’s voice rang out in the cell: “Donato Jiménez! Here! Up for questioning!”, and he handed him a white envelope. The prisoners knew what it meant. “Donato rose calm and serene; he knew he was on his way to death; he said goodbye to all of us who were beside him… It was a farewell for ever; he said: ‘until eternity’. The Father never came back down to the cell.”

Testimony of a cellmate, in Hispania Martyr.

At eight in the morning of the 18th a man’s body was found in the right-hand ditch at kilometre 12 of the road to France, within the municipality of Fuencarral. According to the doctor’s examination, he had died at around three in the morning from gunshot wounds. The judge recorded him as “an unidentified man” of 40 to 45, “strong, rather stout, of average height, grey-haired, with brown eyes”. He was sixty-three.

Death record, Fuencarral Civil Registry, 19 September 1936 (Registro Civil Único de Madrid, sec. 3, vol. 32-30, f. 107 v.).

He had his breviary, his rosary and his crucifix on him when he died. The court stapled a photograph of the body to the record so that he could be identified one day.

Ibid.

He was buried on 19 September in the Fuencarral cemetery, as an “unidentified male corpse”, in court 3, row 6, grave number 15. Later the body was exhumed, with no record of the date or of where it was taken; it most probably ended up in the common ossuary. He has no known grave.

Certificate from the Almudena Cemetery, 6 April 2006, based on the Fuencarral Cemetery Register.

In 2006, while the cause for beatification was being prepared, Fr Antonio Manuel Quesada, a Redemptorist and now vice-postulator of the cause, requested the details of that unidentified body. The details in the record and the photograph made it possible to identify him. By an order of 21 March 2006, the Civil Registry added a note in the margin of the record correcting what had been written in 1936: the deceased is “Donato Giménez Bibiano, born on the twenty-first of March eighteen seventy-three, son of Miguel and Brígida, a native of Alaejos (Valladolid), and not as entered”.

Marginal note on the death record, 28 April 2006. Letter from the Almudena Cemetery to Fr Antonio M. Quesada.

There is no record of any trial or formal charge. He said it himself when he entered the cell: he had been arrested for being a Redemptorist religious. What he was asked about under questioning was his superiors, his confreres and his preaching. The Church examined his death together with those of eleven other Redemptorists of Madrid and, on 24 April 2021, Pope Francis recognised it as martyrdom in hatred of the faith.

Decree of martyrdom, Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, 24 April 2021.