A Lay Saint Born Among Workers

Pascual Torres Lloret was born in Carcaixent—then officially known by its Spanish name, Carcagente—in the province and Diocese of Valencia, Spain, at ten o’clock in the evening on January 23, 1885. He was baptized two days later, on January 25, in the Parish of the Assumption of Our Lady. He was the son of Pascual Torres Pérez and Josefa Teresa Lloret Martínez, both from farming families in the town. He was confirmed on February 22, 1894, by the then Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal Ciriaco María Sancha y Hervás, who was himself beatified in 2009.

His childhood and youth were marked by considerable poverty. The available sources do not provide enough information to reconstruct his schooling in detail, but everything suggests that he began working at an early age and acquired most of his professional training through practical experience. He started as a bricklayer and, through experience, hard work, and organizational ability, eventually became a master builder.

This humble background is important for understanding his later social awareness. Pascual did not approach poor workers from the distance of someone observing a reality foreign to him. He knew physical labor, job insecurity, and financial hardship because he had experienced them himself. Even after attaining a position of greater responsibility on construction projects, his family continued to live modestly.

He began working with the builder Vicente Albiñana and later became independent. A recent biographical compilation prepared by the official chronicler of Carcaixent attributes several local projects to Pascual: work on the facade of the building that served as the Carlist headquarters, part of the construction of the Parish Center, numerous minor repairs to the Church of the Assumption, and several buildings in the area of urban expansion known as Morerar de Bru, now incorporated into the main promenade of Carcaixent.

He was therefore not a man removed from the world, but a well-known professional who interacted daily with property owners, laborers, families, and those responsible for local institutions. His spirituality took shape amid his work, family obligations, and the social relationships typical of an agricultural town undergoing transformation..

Blessed Pascual Torres Lloret. Digitally restored image based on a photograph published by the Archdiocese of Granada (Spain).

Husband and Father

On October 5, 1911, Pascual married Leonor Pérez Canet in the Parish of the Assumption. Born in 1888, she was the daughter of José Pérez Talens and Leonor Canet Montaner. The couple had four children: Pascual, born in 1914; Teresa, in 1920; Leonor del Santo Cáliz, in 1923; and José María, in 1928.

The family first lived on Santa Rita Street and later moved to Baronesa de Santa Bárbara Street. Some sources give different house numbers for this second residence, probably because the numbering of the street was subsequently changed.

The surviving testimonies describe Pascual as a responsible husband and father, deeply devoted to his wife and children. His religious life did not unfold apart from them. Family prayer, especially the Rosary, had a regular place in their home. Leonor shared in and supported his charitable works, even when they meant giving others part of an income that the family itself needed.

Pascual’s marital spirituality was not expressed in treatises or personal journals. No writings of his have been preserved that would allow us to develop a systematic account of his beliefs. His decisions, however, reveal a very concrete understanding of Christian marriage: a shared faith, the education of children, hospitality, opening the family home to those in danger, and accepting together the consequences of living publicly as Catholics.

During the months of persecution, Pascual and Leonor turned their home into a small place of refuge and prayer. Some sources state that they welcomed women religious who had been expelled from their communities. They also safeguarded the Eucharist there when public worship was interrupted. At night, husband and wife took turns remaining in prayer before the consecrated hosts.

The later testimony of their son José María offers a glimpse of the human cost of Pascual’s murder. He was eight years old when he saw militiamen take his father away in a dark automobile. He remembered his mother pleading with them not to arrest Pascual because he had suffered a bout of kidney colic during the night. When the family learned of his death, Leonor was deeply affected and subsequently suffered partial paralysis.

Decades later, José María, by then involved in marriage catechesis in Valencia, said that he had forgiven his father’s killers. With a radical conviction born of faith, he expressed the hope that he might one day meet them in heaven. That forgiveness continued one of the defining characteristics through which the Church has interpreted Pascual’s martyrdom: the refusal to answer hatred with more hatred.

A Worker with a Demanding Sense of Justice

One of the most distinctive aspects of Pascual Torres Lloret’s life was the way he treated the workers under his supervision.

According to local custom, a master builder could receive ten percent of the laborers’ wages. Pascual refused to profit personally from this practice. The sources describe the matter in slightly different ways: some state that he waived the percentage, while others say that he distributed it among the workers. In either case, they agree on the essential point: he did not consider it morally acceptable to increase his own income at the expense of the wages earned by those working under his direction.

Some accounts add that he gave part of his own pay to workers facing particularly difficult circumstances. This generosity becomes even more significant when we remember that he was not a wealthy businessman and had a wife and four children to support.

His conduct should not be interpreted merely as an occasional act of kindness. It reflected a conviction about work and economic relationships. For Pascual, overseeing a construction project did not simply mean organizing tasks, demanding results, and collecting a fee. It meant recognizing the dignity of the worker and accepting responsibility toward someone who depended on a daily wage to support a family.

This behavior reveals a practical reception of Catholic social teaching as it had developed since the late nineteenth century, especially following Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum. There is no evidence that Pascual wrote about these teachings or received academic instruction in social questions. He nevertheless brought them into the concrete setting of a construction site: wages, labor relations, family needs, and the renunciation of a benefit he regarded as unjust.

His conduct represents an early expression of what today might be called business ethics or workplace justice. He did not solve the structural inequalities of his time, but he refused to perpetuate them wherever his own decisions could make a difference.

A Spirituality Centered on the Eucharist

The Eucharist stood at the center of Pascual’s spiritual life. He attended Mass daily and received Communion with a frequency still uncommon among many lay Catholics of his era. He also set aside time each day for prayer and meditation.

His participation in Nocturnal Adoration deepened this relationship with the Eucharistic mystery. It was not simply a matter of attending ceremonies, but of learning to remain in silence, keep vigil, and trust. This spirituality helps explain the serenity that witnesses attributed to him during his periods of detention.

He was also a close collaborator of the pastor and priests of the Church of the Assumption. He took part in apostolic, religious, and social activities, and some sources describe him as a catechist. His commitment did not arise from a clerical role but from a highly developed awareness of the responsibility laypeople bear within the life of the Church.

In 1932, he helped establish Catholic Action in the Parish of the Assumption, particularly its youth branch. He has therefore been described as one of the local forerunners of the movement. Catholic Action sought to form laypeople to take active responsibility for evangelizing their family, professional, and social environments under the guidance of their pastors.

Pascual also belonged to the Catholic League of Fathers, an association that promoted the Christian responsibility of parents in education and society. His simultaneous involvement in these organizations reveals a thoroughly integrated spirituality: prayer, family, formation, parish ministry, workplace justice, and service to the poor.

His apostolate was one of presence and example. He worked, prayed, visited people, collected donations, and accepted responsibilities. His authority came from the consistency between what he professed and what he did.

Pascual Torres Lloret and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul

Pascual’s connection with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is explicitly confirmed by several Church sources and, most significantly, by a publication of the Society’s National Council in Spain. He was an active member of the Society’s Conferences, the lay association founded in Paris in 1833 by Frédéric Ozanam and his companions and introduced in Spain by Santiago de Masarnau in 1849.

The available sources do not specify the name of his Conference, the positions he may have held, or the exact date he joined. Nor have any minutes been found that would allow us to reconstruct its meetings or identify by name the families he visited. It would be unwise to fill these documentary silences with conjecture.

What is documented is that, as a member of the Conferences, he assisted people in need, even using part of his modest wages. This information allows us to recognize in his life some of the essential features of the Vincentian vocation: the union of prayer and service, personal contact with those who suffer, and a charity that is not limited to giving away whatever happens to be left over.

His refusal to profit from the wages of his workers can also be understood in light of his Vincentian commitment. For him, service to the poor did not begin only after the workday ended. It began with the way work itself was organized and with the treatment of those who depended on him. Justice and charity were not separate compartments.

Pascual therefore embodied in a particularly compelling way Frédéric Ozanam’s fundamental insight: faith must demonstrate its vitality through concrete works of love and justice. Helping a family, relinquishing an unjust source of income, accompanying a worker, supporting a health care institution, and bringing Communion to someone who was sick were all part of the same following of Christ.

He is now included among the saints and blesseds connected with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The International Confederation recognizes him as one of twenty-five blessed Vincentians martyred in Spain during the twentieth-century religious persecution.

His Support for Fontilles

Another important dimension of his charitable work was his support for the Fontilles Sanatorium, established in the Vall de Laguar in the province of Alicante to care for people affected by Hansen’s disease, then commonly known as leprosy.

Pascual maintained a close friendship with two of the institution’s principal founders: the Jesuit Father Carlos Ferrís Vila and Joaquín Ballester Lloret. He collected donations for the sanatorium and, according to the most recent local documentation, personally delivered the funds each year at Easter.

Some later biographical profiles state that he traveled to Fontilles and assisted patients directly. Other, more restrained sources document only his friendship with the founders, his enthusiasm for the work, and his fundraising. The most prudent conclusion is therefore that his constant personal support for the sanatorium is securely established, without assigning him specific caregiving duties that are not described with sufficient precision.

In any case, this commitment was significant. People with Hansen’s disease suffered not only the physical consequences of the illness but also profound social stigma. Helping them meant drawing near to a particularly excluded group and supporting an organized effort to provide treatment, shelter, and dignity.

For a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, this cause had a clear Gospel and Vincentian resonance: discovering Christ in those who were rejected and supporting organized and effective forms of service.

A file photo showing the facade of the Fontilles Sanatorium. Source: Valencian Association for the Fight Against Leprosy (Fontilles).

Spain Between the Second Republic and the Civil War

Understanding the death of Pascual Torres Lloret requires placing it within its historical context while avoiding both partisan simplification and false moral equivalence.

The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed on April 14, 1931, following the departure of King Alfonso XIII. The new regime launched a broad program of political, military, educational, agrarian, and labor reforms. It also established a secular framework for the state, separating Church and public authority and restricting certain activities of religious orders.

These transformations responded to genuine historical problems: profound social inequality, concentrated land ownership, rural poverty, an inadequate educational system, weak democratic institutions, and the excessive influence of certain traditional powers. At the same time, some religious policies, openly anticlerical rhetoric, and episodes of violence against churches and convents were perceived by many Catholics as threats not merely to ecclesiastical privileges but to their freedom of conscience and way of life.

The Spanish Church was not a homogeneous institution either. Much of the hierarchy and many Catholic organizations were culturally and socially close to conservative positions. There were also Catholics committed to social teaching, advocates of reformist solutions, supporters of republican legality, and people such as Pascual whose primary involvement was in parish and charitable work.

During these years, political polarization, labor conflict, and violence involving groups of different ideologies all increased. The workers’ uprising of October 1934, which was harshly suppressed, left a deep wound. The elections of February 1936 brought victory to the Popular Front, a coalition of republican and left-wing parties. In the months that followed, street clashes, reprisals, attacks on religious buildings, and the inability of some authorities to guarantee public order effectively all intensified.

In Carcaixent, hostility toward the Church had manifested itself even before the war began. In May 1936, religious institutions were attacked, sacred objects were destroyed, and churches were closed. Several religious communities were expelled. Local tension formed part of a broader social fracture, but it also had its own dynamics, fueled by personal relationships, political rivalries, and years of confrontation.

A local biographical compilation published in 2026 identifies Pascual as a member of the Derecha Regional Agraria, or Regional Agrarian Right, a Catholic and conservative organization associated with the Valencian Regional Right. This detail does not appear in most of his Church biographies, but it should be acknowledged in order to present a historically complete picture.

No evidence has been found, however, that Pascual held political office, participated in an armed organization, collaborated in the military conspiracy, or was involved in acts of violence. His possible political affiliation situates him within the conservative social Catholicism of his time, but it does not turn his killing into an act of war or the execution of a proven criminal responsibility.

The Military Coup and the Breakdown of Public Authority

On July 17 and 18, 1936, part of the Spanish military rebelled against the government of the Republic. The coup succeeded in some areas and failed in others, dividing the country and beginning the Spanish Civil War.

Valencia remained under republican authority. However, as happened elsewhere in the republican rear guard, the failure of the uprising produced a profound fragmentation of power during the first months of the war. The distribution of weapons to workers’ organizations and the formation of committees and militias greatly diminished the state’s ability to control violence.

This phenomenon cannot be explained simply by referring to isolated criminals or “uncontrolled elements.” Historical studies show that organized groups existed, linked in different ways to political parties, trade unions, revolutionary committees, and local power structures. These groups carried out arbitrary arrests, searches, confiscations, “rides”—a euphemism for taking prisoners away to be killed—and extrajudicial executions. Their victims included military personnel believed to support the coup, property owners, right-wing activists, priests, religious, and laypeople known for their Catholic activities.

At the same time, each murder should not automatically be attributed to the republican government. Some republican leaders opposed the killings, and the gradual restoration of state policing and judicial institutions helped reduce them. The violence was particularly intense in places where power had become more fragmented and local armed groups enjoyed greater autonomy.

Nor would it be acceptable to use these crimes to justify the military uprising, the repression carried out in rebel-held territory, or the subsequent Franco dictatorship. Serious human rights violations were committed in both rear guards, although they differed in their logic, perpetrators, timing, and scale. Francoist repression lasted longer and was progressively incorporated into the judicial, military, and administrative structures of the new regime.

In the province of Valencia, research by Vicent Gabarda has identified approximately 2,844 people killed in republican rear-guard repression. Roughly three-quarters of them died during August, September, and October 1936, precisely the period when power was most fragmented. The Ribera Alta region, which includes Carcaixent, was among the areas particularly affected.

Pascual Torres died within this first wave of violence. His death did not occur in combat, after a trial with due process, or accidentally during a military operation. It was an extrajudicial execution following several arrests and interrogations.

A Specifically Religious Persecution

The violence in the republican rear guard had political, social, economic, personal, and religious dimensions. These motives were often intertwined. A person might be persecuted simultaneously because of conservative political activity, social position, a local feud, and ties to the Church.

In Pascual Torres’s case, his Catholic identity was public and highly visible. He was a parish collaborator, a member of several associations, a nocturnal adorer, a promoter of Catholic Action, a Vincentian, and a protector of sacred objects. During the persecution, he continued to carry out clandestine religious activities. These circumstances help explain why he was targeted.

Church sources maintain that he was killed out of hatred for the faith. That phrase has a precise canonical meaning: for martyrdom to be recognized, the Church must conclude that the victim freely accepted death and that the persecutor was decisively motivated by hostility toward the faith or a Christian virtue.

From a historical perspective, it is prudent to recognize the possible overlap between religion and politics in the minds of his persecutors. His membership in organized Catholic life and his possible conservative affiliation could merge into the image of an “enemy.” No specific charge has been found against him, however, for committing a crime, engaging in violence, or assisting the military coup.

The activities that led to his arrests were essentially religious: taking part in a Mass, safeguarding the Eucharist, hiding books and sacred vessels, bringing Communion to others, and encouraging fellow Catholics. The canonical process concluded that this religious element was decisive in his death.

Acknowledging this does not require turning every defender of the Republic into a religious persecutor or identifying the Republic itself with the groups that murdered him. It means affirming a more limited fact: in Carcaixent in 1936, armed actors considered Pascual’s public and clandestine religious activity sufficient reason to arrest and kill him.

The First Arrests

On July 25, 1936, one week after the war began, Pascual was arrested while attending a Mass celebrated by Enrique Pelufo Esteve, the assistant priest of Carcaixent. Some sources state that Pascual was helping with the celebration and that he was arrested alongside Juan Gonga Martínez, a young member of Catholic Action who would also later be beatified.

An old photo of the Maria Inmaculada School in Carcaixent. The image was digitally restored from a photograph published by Levante-El Mercantil Valenciano.

The detainees were taken to the School of Mary Immaculate, whose chapel had been converted into a detention center. Pascual remained there for three or four days, depending on the source.

During this first detention, he devoted himself to comforting the other prisoners. He encouraged them to remain calm and expressed his willingness to accept whatever God permitted. There is no record of a formal judicial proceeding against him. He was eventually released.

After returning home, he told his family and a close friend that he sensed his life was nearing its end. He was advised to go into hiding or leave Carcaixent, but he refused. This decision should not be interpreted as an irresponsible search for death. Pascual did not voluntarily surrender to those who wanted to arrest him, nor did he provoke his adversaries. He simply chose to remain close to his family, his friends, and those who needed help.

During August, he was repeatedly summoned before the local committee. The sources do not agree on the total number of arrests and interrogations: some speak of four detentions, while others mention seven appearances, including interrogations and overnight confinements. The discrepancy appears to depend on which episodes are counted as actual arrests.

What is certain is that he received repeated warnings and knew that he was being watched.

A Clandestine Apostolate

After the churches were closed, the parish’s assistant priest entrusted him with consecrated hosts wrapped in corporal cloths. Pascual kept them in his home and, with ecclesiastical authorization, brought Communion to the sick, the dying, women religious in hiding, and other Catholics who requested it.

His son José María remembered that the hosts were carefully protected inside a piece of cloth. On one occasion, during a search of the family home, a militiaman rummaged through their belongings without discovering them. In the child’s mind, that small piece of cloth had allowed his father to remain with them a little longer.

Pascual also used his masonry skills to hide religious objects. Some were placed in a trench near the parish church; others were concealed behind walls that he built or repaired in the rectory. He hid books, archival materials, and sacred vessels to prevent their destruction.

He also visited frightened families to encourage them. His conduct was neither aggressive nor conspiratorial. He did not organize armed resistance. He practiced his faith clandestinely and provided moral support to people living under threat.

This activity explains the accusation that, according to one daughter’s recollection, accompanied his final arrest: Pascual was said to be “imitating the priests.” If the phrase was indeed spoken exactly that way, it is revealing. What his persecutors held against the master builder was that he had assumed responsibilities for religious assistance in the absence of priests.

The Final Arrest and Killing

On September 6, 1936, Pascual was ill after suffering a painful bout of kidney colic during the night. His son José María had gone out to buy carbonated water to help relieve his discomfort.

Around noon, several militiamen arrived at the family home. Leonor asked them not to take him because he was sick. Pascual came forward, entered a room, put on his jacket, gathered a few papers, said goodbye to his family, and got into the vehicle.

He was taken to the building that had previously served as the Civil Guard barracks. He remained there until nightfall. No record survives of a formal charge, defense attorney, trial, or sentence.

At midnight, he was taken to the old cemetery of Carcaixent. There he was shot. He was fifty-one years old.

Some later accounts attribute words of acceptance of martyrdom to him shortly before his death. Since no fully verifiable direct testimony exists concerning the precise moment of his execution, it is preferable not to reconstruct the scene with dialogue whose exact wording cannot be established.

The gravedigger buried him the following day in a cemetery grave. His death was entered into the civil registry in 1939 through a subsequent legal proceeding. The record mistakenly gives the date as November 6, but Church documentation, family testimony, and historical studies all agree that he was killed on September 6, 1936.

A Family That Chose Forgiveness

Pascual’s death left Leonor with four children. The eldest daughter was the one who informed the family that their father had been killed. She had gone to his place of detention to bring him food and there learned what had happened during the night.

The impact on Leonor was devastating. The preserved family testimony, however, does not convey a desire for revenge. Sixty-five years later, José María said that the tragedy had helped them mature and that he forgave the killers.

This is important if Pascual’s memory is to be kept from becoming an instrument of political confrontation. His family neither denied the crime nor minimized it. They remembered it through a faith that sought to break the cycle of hatred.

In his homily at the beatification, Pope John Paul II emphasized that the martyrs being recognized that day had forgiven their executioners. The purpose of their remembrance, he explained, should be to banish every form of violence, hatred, and resentment from Spain. The beatification was not intended to reopen the divisions of the Civil War, but to present Christian lives capable of responding to violence without reproducing it.

Recognition of His Martyrdom

The cause of Pascual Torres Lloret was included in the process of José Aparicio Sanz and seventy-two companion martyrs of the Archdiocese of Valencia. This group was, in turn, part of the 233 Spanish martyrs beatified together by Pope John Paul II.

The decree officially recognizing their martyrdom was promulgated on December 18, 2000. On January 21, 2001, a Mass of thanksgiving and the solemn interment of Pascual’s remains were celebrated in the Church of the Assumption in Carcaixent. His remains now rest in that church.

The beatification took place in St. Peter’s Square on March 11, 2001. The group included priests, men and women religious, and many laypeople: men and women, young people, spouses, fathers, and mothers, from different dioceses and associations.

John Paul II stated that, according to the canonical investigations, those martyrs had not taken part in armed conflict and had died because of their Christian identity and Church involvement. This statement must be understood in relation to the cause of martyrdom: the Church was not issuing a general historiographical judgment on the Second Republic or the Spanish Civil War, but declaring that those beatified had not been executed for proven crimes or acts of combat.

In Pascual’s particular case, possible membership in a conservative political organization does not invalidate this conclusion. Political affiliation, criminal responsibility, and the immediate reason for a person’s death are distinct questions. No evidence has been found that he held a significant political position or participated in any violent action. What is amply documented is that he continued carrying out religious activities even when doing so could cost him his life.

His individual liturgical memorial is celebrated on September 6, the anniversary of his death. He is also included in the collective commemoration of the Valencian martyrs beatified in 2001.

A Spirituality for the Vincentian Family

Pascual Torres Lloret offers the Vincentian Family an especially accessible witness because he was an ordinary layman. He did not found a religious community, write books, or hold major Church responsibilities. He was a bricklayer, master builder, husband, father, and member of a Conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

His spirituality can be summarized in five inseparable characteristics.

• The first is the centrality of the Eucharist. Daily Communion, Nocturnal Adoration, and the clandestine safeguarding of the Blessed Sacrament were not isolated practices. They were the source of his ability to remain serene and to serve.
• The second is personal and organized charity. He helped people with his own resources, but he also belonged to the Conferences and supported a specialized institution such as Fontilles. He understood that goodwill needs community, continuity, and organization.
• The third is justice in the workplace. His relationship with his workers shows that Vincentian charity does not consist only of alleviating the consequences of poverty. It also requires examining the labor and economic practices that can harm the most vulnerable.
• The fourth is holiness within the family. Leonor and their children were not a secondary element in his life. Shared prayer, hospitality, and mutual support made their home a place of faith and service.
• The fifth is strength without violence. Pascual did not conceal his identity, but neither did he take up arms or encourage revenge. He remained among his people, protected the Eucharist, accompanied those who were afraid, and accepted the consequences of his fidelity.

His life invites us to understand martyrdom not as an episode disconnected from everything that came before it, but as the culmination of choices made over many years. The night of September 6 did not suddenly make an ordinary man holy. It revealed how far he was prepared to carry a life already marked by prayer, honesty, justice, and charity.

Christian Memory and Reconciliation

Speaking today about a martyr of the Spanish Civil War requires sensitivity. Pascual’s memory must not be used to conceal the suffering of other victims, justify the later dictatorship, or assign collective guilt to those who defended the Republic.

Nor should his murder be silenced in order to avoid confronting religious persecution and anticlerical violence. Authentic reconciliation is not built by erasing some victims in favor of others, but by recognizing the dignity of all and rigorously studying specific responsibilities.

Pascual was an unarmed citizen executed without trial. For the Church, he was also a martyr because the decisive cause of his death was his Christian fidelity. Both statements—the historical and the theological—can be made without turning his figure into a partisan weapon.

His son pointed toward the more demanding path: remembering, calling the crime by its name, and forgiving. Christian forgiveness does not make murder less serious or eliminate the need to know the truth. It prevents the killer from retaining permanent power over the heart of the victim and the victim’s descendants.

For the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Pascual Torres Lloret confirms that the Vincentian vocation can lead to profound holiness within ordinary circumstances. His service did not consist of spectacular gestures, but of repeated actions: sharing his wages, respecting the worker, collecting donations, supporting a family in need, visiting the sick, accompanying the frightened, and bringing Communion when priests could no longer minister openly.

The memory of Blessed Pascual thus remains connected with three places: the construction site where he defended the dignity of the worker, the home where his family prayed and welcomed those who were persecuted, and the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul where he learned to recognize Christ in those most in need of help.

Colored image of Blessed Pascual Torres Lloret.