His arms and legs strapped to the table, Jose, age 14, wept quietly as an army officer removed his coat and hung it on a peg in the wall. With water dripping around them in the sacristy under a government-occupied Catholic church, the soldier unsheathed his wickedly curved blade and, with a smirk, told the boy he would soon beg to spit on Christ the King--el Cristo Rey. Jose, a member of a group of Catholics fighting religious restrictions in Mexico between 1926 and 1929 known as Cristeros, was under question for the whereabouts and strength of force of his companions, as well as being compelled to renounce Christ and proclaim the supremacy of the Mexican government. As the Mexican officer drew his knife across the soles of the boy's feet, however, what fell from his lips were not secrets or blasphemies, but shouts of "Jesus give me strength" (Jesus da me fuerzas) and finally, in shrieks that rang through the streets of the city above " Vive Cristo Rey'--Long live Christ the King.

The vanity of the torture now apparent, his tormentors marched Jose barefoot and trailing his own blood to an awaiting grave. There, his mother stood, smiling and proudly looking on as her son refused to say the words "Death to Christ the King, Long Live the Government." Given one last chance, the boy smiled sweetly, declared his love for his mother, and as thunder crashed and the sky opened with weeping rain, he once more declared vive Cristo Rey while soldiers stabbed, shot, and unceremoniously kicked his body into the hole--but not before he drew a cross with his own blood. The long moment of agony now over, Joses military companions suddenly arrived on horseback, pouring out vengeance with a storm of bullets, The general leading the charge then leapt into the grave, pulled Jose from the wet earth and gave him to his mother, who cradled him in a classic pieta, her rosaries tightly wrapped around her hand and firm in her faith and knowledge that her son died a martyr for Christ. (2)

Such was the baroque cinematic interpretation of the death of Jose Sanchez del Rio, whose death in Mexico's Cristero War (1926-1929) earned him a place as a Catholic martyr, beatified by Pope Benedict XVI along with twelve other Catholics that perished in the conflict. On October 16, 2016, Pope Francis proclaimed the boy soldier a canonized saint. But the above vignette does not come from a Vatican film; rather, it originated four years prior when the boy saint's story was partially told in the 2012 film, For Greater Glory.

For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada ("Cristiada" is another term used to describe the Cristero War) debuted in 2012 to weak secular reviews and tepid box-office receipts, but the film about the Cristero War in Mexico captured the imagination of religious observers--both Protestant and Catholic--in the United States. Exploring the war between Catholics and the revolutionary state in Mexico from...