April 23, 2023 – A commentary on the Astorga diocesan website said the International Red Cross had protested the nurses’ killing and pressed the Spanish government for justice, as well as assisting their exhumation from a mass grave and reinterment at Astorga cathedral in 1948. “The life and martyrdom of these three laywomen, health care workers in hard times of conflict, provide a valid reference point for Christian life today,” the commentary added, “in a world where women continue to be denigrated and Christians persecuted for their faith, and in which ordinary people, seeing their health threatened by a pandemic, especially value the work of health professionals and volunteers.” Almost 2,000 Catholics from the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War have been beatified or canonized as martyrs. During the war, 12% of the nation’s clergy were killed after an anti-clerical Popular Front government sanctioned a campaign to desecrate and destroy church properties.