"Long live Christ the King" are the last words of a modern martyr. Padre Miguel Pro SJ's witness shows the greatness of our religion and the irrational pettiness of a society that sets itself against God and religion. At the time, the Mexican leader Plutarco Calles enforced laws against the Catholic Church. Mass, confession and even praying the rosary were all punishable offenses. To protect the clergy as far as possible, bishops and religious communities developed plans to remove clergy, but some priests chose to stay and minister to the people. From 1926 - 1929, 160 priests were executed along with hundreds more lay men, women and children. On the heels of the Russian revolution, there was a wide spread belief that religion was holding up progess. If only people could be liberated from God, the would be more devoted to improving their lot in this life. Even today, there is a popular belief that the real cause of war and misery is religion. Belief in God and practice of one's own faith is presumed to be irrational by many. But such prejudice proved prosaic when throughout the 20th century godless regimes showed impious men were the most inhumane men of all. The persecution of the Church in Mexico and the martyrdom of Padre Pro is part of this larger political story. Today, in the United States, even among some conservatives, there is the bizarre assumption that somehow men are better off without God. But whenever I look back on the sorrowful century we have just left behind us, I am baffled by this prosaic thinking. A lot of people like to assert that religion is the biggest cause of war and more recently 9/11 is gleefully pointed to as an example of how religion is. They like to ignore my complaints about the atheistic policies of genocide socialist countries have taken up – policies that led to the deaths of more people in a mere one hundred years than those put to death by any religious country in the last two thousand. The problem is never religion itself. The problem is irrationality – whether atheistic or theistic. Whenever human beings think that the end justifies the means – they do stupid things to each other. Religious people on the whole are more inclined to be rational than non-religious people. This is because people who believe in God know they are not him. Atheists are inclined to think because there is no God, they need to take his place. The story of Padre Miguel Pro is an example of how God-fearing people can help keep society rational. Tonight at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, in Denver – our men are performing “Viva Christo Rey” a play about this man’s story. For those who think God stands in the way of the utopia they want to create – it would be good for them to familiarize themselves with what happened in Mexico in the last century. They just might realize that utopia does not exist – but God does and He helps keep society human.