Blessed Pedro María Ramírez Ramos

Pedro María Ramírez Ramos (23 October 1899 – 10 April 1948) was a Colombian Roman Catholic priest killed during the outbreak of the Colombian civil war known as La Violencia. He served as the pastor of Armero, where he was stationed until his murder in 1948. The outbreak of the conflict saw families offer to smuggle him out of the town for his safety, which he refused, saying that he would not abandon his people in their hour of need. But liberal insurgents – who saw him as an instigator of the assassination of a leading national politician – burst into his church and took him to the central square where he was lynched and mutilated. The cause for Ramírez' canonization was opened in 1993. His beatification was approved in July 2017 by Pope Francis, who personally presided over his beatification in Villavicencio on 8 September 2017 during his apostolic visit to the nation. Ramírez was born on 23 October 1899 in La Plata to Ramón Ramírez Flórez and Isabel Ramos. He was baptized the next day in the local Parish Church of St. Sebastian. It was at that church that he also made his First Communion. Ramírez' initial education was overseen in his local village. He attended high school at the Minor Seminary of St. Aloysius Gonzaga in Elias, Huila. He commenced his formal studies for the priesthood on 4 October 1915 at the seminary of the Diocese of Garzón, where he received minor orders in 1917. Ramirez developed doubts about his vocation, however, and decided to leave the seminary in 1920, seeking an answer to his vocational calling and relief from the frequent headaches from he suffered. He spent the subsequent years working as a choir director in various locations, initially at his former high school, and from 1924 at the village of Alpujarra, Tolima.