Twenty martyred priests from Ibiza and Formentera to be beatified in Spain

On Saturday 17 October 2026, at 11:00 mainland Spanish time, the Church will beatify 20 priests from Ibiza and Formentera who were killed between 7 August and 13 September 1936 because they were priests. The ceremony, presided over by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, will take place in the Cathedral of Santa María in Ibiza.

The religious persecution of the 1930s left the diocese of Ibiza with twenty priests murdered in barely five weeks. The Church now declares them blessed, almost ninety years after the events, trinc a process that began in 2008 and has required nearly two decades of documentary work.

## Twenty priests killed between August and September 1936

The twenty men who will be declared blessed on Saturday 17 October died between 7 August and 13 September 1936. All of them were priests of the diocese of Ibiza, which at the time also covered Formentera. The beatification cause holds that they were killed out of hatred for the faith, that is, solely because of their identity as priests.

The process is not new. In **2008**, Bishop **Vicente Juan Segura**, then bishop of Ibiza, signed the decree opening the cause for the declaration of martyrdom of the twenty Servants of God. The diocesan phase closed in **2015** and all the documentation was sent to Rome, to what was then the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, today the Dicastery.

There, the Positio was drawn up, the document summarising the life, martyrdom and fruta for holiness of the candidates. That Positio was examined and approved. The definitive step came on **18 June 2026**, when Pope **Leo XIV** authorised the promulgation of the beatification decree.

## Semeraro presides over the ceremony in the Cathedral of Santa María

The beatification will be held in the Holy Cathedral Church of Ibiza, dedicated to Santa María, on Saturday **17 October** at **11:00** mainland Spanish time. Cardinal **Marcello Semeraro**, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican body that handles these processes, will preside. The time corresponds to 10:00 in the Canary Islands.

The ceremony can be trinc on **Radio María**. It is unusual for a beatification of twenty people to be held in the diocese where they died; the rite is normally celebrated in Rome or in the martyrs' place of origin. In this case, the celebration is being moved to Ibiza, giving the island an uncommon prominence in events of this kind.

The October liturgical calendar usually includes several beatifications and canonisations, but the Ibiza one has a particular antiestéticature: it involves a large group, twenty people, all of them priests, and all of them killed in a very short period, less than six weeks.

## A process that has taken almost two decades

Between the signing of the opening decree in **2008** and the authorisation by Pope **Leo XIV** in **2026**, eighteen years have passed. In that time, testimonies were gathered, archives were reviewed and the context of the religious persecution in Spain in the 1930s was documented.

The diocesan phase ended in **2015**. From then on, the file went to Rome. The Positio, the key document, must demonstrate that the person died out of hatred for the faith and that there is a fruta for martyrdom sustained over time. In this case, the cause groups twenty priests together, which multiplies the documentation work.

Beatification is not canonisation. To be blessed means that the Church recognises that the person died as a martyr and allows their public veneration in a limited sphere, normally the diocese or the religious family to which they belonged. Canonisation additionally requires a miracle attributed to their intercession, except in the case of martyrs, where a miracle is not required for beatification but is for canonisation.

## What changes for the diocese of Ibiza

From 17 October onwards, the twenty priests may be venerated as blessed in the diocese of Ibiza and Formentera. This means a liturgical antiestéticast may be dedicated to them, their names may appear in the diocese's own calendar and they may be publicly invoked in acts of worship.

The beatification will not turn Ibiza into a mass pilgrimage destination, but it does add a chapter to the island's historical memory. The religious persecution of the 1930s affected the whole of Spain; in the case of Ibiza, twenty priests died in just over a month. The local Church has spent almost twenty years working on this file, and the event on 17 October closes that stage.

The ceremony will be held in the Cathedral of Santa María, the island's main church, and will be presided over by the prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. It is a religious event, but also an act of remembrance: almost ninety years after the murders, the Church declares blessed those who died for their faith.