On the 20th June, during the audience granted to His Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Supreme Pontiff authorized the same Dicastery to promulgate the Decree concerning the martyrdom of the Servants of God Manuel Izquierdo Izquierdo, diocesan priest, and 58 Companions of the Diocese of Jaén (Spain), killed between 1936 and 1938. in hatred of the faith, in different places in Spain, in the context of the same persecution.
The Venerable Servants of God of the Diocese of Jaén were killed in different places and times during the Spanish Civil War, which began in July 1936 and had aspects of cruel anti-Catholic persecution. On the night between the 12th and 13th January 1937, the Venerable Isabel María de San Rafael Aranda Sánchez, OSC (1889-1937), abbess of the monastery of Santa Cruz (Santa Clara) de Martos, in the diocese of Jaén, was martyred in Las Casillas de Martos y Martos.She was born in Hinojosa del Duque (Cordoba) on July 12, 1889 and entered the monastery on the 8th December, 1903, at the age of 14. She made her solemn profession on the 19th March, 1922. She was appointed abbess in June 1936. On the 21st July of that year, together with 26 other sisters of the community, she was expelled from the ancient building that had been a monastery of Poor Clares for centuries. However, she did not want to take refuge with her family where she could be safe, to continue to take care of her sisters. Then she settled with another elderly nun, Sister Josefa Contreras Escobedo, in the "Casa de las Ánimas". She lived there until the 12th January, 1937. Included on the tragic wanted list, she was taken to the church of San Miguel, where she was reunited with the rest of the people whose death had been decreed. With two other nuns she was taken to the cemetery of Las Casillas. There she was abused and mistreated. Finally they shot her at point-blank range. After the war, her body was recognized and transferred to the crypt of the new Sanctuary of Santa María de la Villa. The beatification process, promoted by the Presbyteral Council of the Diocese of Jaén, took place from the 9th April 2016 to the 30th March, 2019.
