The Last Crusade
"Crusade" means a war for the sake of the Cross, a war to protect Christian people from persecution and death on account of their faith in Jesus Christ. Everyone has head of the crusades of the Middle Ages. But few know of the crusade in our own time, which living men still remember, fought for this same purpose only sixty years ago in Spain. In just six months of the year 1936, fifteen bishops and more than six thousands priests, seminarians, monks, and nuns were martyred in Spain by enemies of Christianity. It was the greatest clerical bloodletting in so short a span of time since the persecutions of the Church by ancient Roman emperors. Already Pope John Paul II has beatified some two hundred of these martyrs. Tens of thousands of churches, chapels, and shrines in Spain were pillaged or destroyed. In response, faithful Spanish Catholics proclaimed a crusade. Against all odds the crusaders triumphed, and the Church and the Faith in Spain were saved. This is the story of that crusade, now honored in no other book in print in the English language. Most people who know of the Spanish Civil War do not understand why it was fought or how it was really won. This book will tell you. There is no story like it in the history of the twentieth century.