Pope Benedict XVI recently beatified 498 priests and nuns who were killed during the three-year Civil War in Spain, 1936-39. Among the 74 martyrs included were three nuns who were also blood sisters --- Carmen, Rosa and Magdalena Fradera Ferragutcasas.

They were religious of the Congregation of Daughters of the Blessed and Immaculate Heart of Mary, originally founded in 1848 in Olot, Spain, from which the California Institute of the same order was formed. Ten members of that original order were sent as missionaries to California in 1871.

The Gilroy foundation became the first of many Immaculate Heart convents, schools and institutions. In 1924 the California group separated from the Spanish congregation to facilitate improved communication and leadership for Immaculate Heart College, high school and expanding institutions throughout the state.

The Spanish counterpart also continued to grow. The three Fradera sisters entered the teaching order in the 1920s, and before the Civil War taught preschool and elementary grades where they were known for their generosity and kindness.

As the Civil War erupted, however, widespread lawlessness broke out, in which thousands of priests and religious were assassinated by both sides in the conflict. Women religious, like Carmen, Rosa and Magdalena, found it necessary to leave their convents, seek other shelter and wear secular clothing. The Fradera sisters returned to their family home, performing domestic duties but maintaining their prayer schedule while living with the threat of martyrdom.

That was soon to come. At midnight of September 27, 1936, several armed, angry men came to the house and demanded that the three women come with them "to testify." The sisters replied, "We go ready to give our lives in faithfulness to our God." They were driven to a nearby small road and until dawn were subjected to every kind of violation and torture --- and then shot and left in the dirt.

In one way or another that atrocity was repeated thousands of times during the bloody conflict. Estimates suggest that some 11 bishops, more than 4,000 priests, 2,600 male religious and 283 women religious were killed.

The sisters' bodies were eventually moved from the family plot to the Girona cemetery and now rest in the chapel of the Corazon de Maria in Olot. Their heroic death as martyrs now ranks them among the blessed honored by the church. At the recent beatification, Pope Benedict said, "their words and gestures of forgiveness towards their persecutors should enable us to work towards reconciliation and peaceful coexistence."

Presiding Oct. 29 over a thanksgiving Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, said the martyrs' "existence certainly speaks to us of faith, strength, generous courage and ardent charity in the face of a culture that sometimes tries to marginalize or scorn the moral and human values the Gospel teaches us."

"These martyrs have not been proposed for veneration by the people of God for political reasons nor in a struggle against whomever," Cardinal Bertone said, "but because they offered their existence as a witness of love for Christ."

---Hermine Lees and CNS