From El Universal
Today we celebrate Saints Cuthbert, Vulfrano, Eufemia, Hippolites and Ambrose.
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Vulfrano was born Ramon Mill Aran in 1909. He was killed in Barcelona in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. In 2007 Benedict beatified him and about 500 other religious who were killed because of Republican hostility to the Church. During the Spanish Civil War, most of the Church sided with the Nationalists and Franco against the Republicans, the latter seeing the Church as representing the elites and the powerful. Pope Benedicts action was seen as deliberately controversial since a Socialist government had just come into power in Spain in 2007. You may remember, this was the government that replaced conservatives following the act of terrorism against a train in Madrid. It was also the government elected in part because of opposition to the country's participation in the Iraq war. Here is a link to an article in the International Herald Tribune giving an account of the beatification and Spanish-Vatican relations at the time.