Fr Miguel Pro was also a Jesuit. Indeed, Fr Pro's life reads like a parallel of Fr Doyle's. Though separated by distance and culture, they were men cut from the same cloth and formed in the same heroic Jesuit school of sanctification.

A couple of years after the guns of war fell silent across Europe, a communist regime took power in Mexico and began brutally repressing the Church. Mexico's bishops called upon all Mexicans to rise up and free their country in a holy crusade under the banner of Christ the King. These were the Cristeros, with their famous battle cry, "Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King). Many heroic martyrdoms date from those times, including that of Fr Miguel Pro.

Fr Pro, like Willie Doyle, was a prankster. His antics brought many a laugh from family and friends. When he started his mission to the underground Church in Mexico he used his talents to good effect, frequently changing his disguise to dodge the secret policemen who shadowed him.

On one occasion police arrived to search a safe house where he was just preparing to celebrate Mass. Moments later a dapper bloke in stylish suit, with Panama hat at a rakish angle, sauntered out to greet them. No, unfortunately he had no information on the whereabouts of a reported priest. Drawing a deep puff on his big cigar he casually wished them good luck, and Fr Pro strolled away to safety.

While Miguel Pro may have had more than a few laughs with his holy antics, he nevertheless suffered immeasurably. Added to his burden of personal penances was the burden of the souls he ministered to as well as the stress of constant danger. He had long suffered from abdominal pains and stomach upset in stressful situations and these became frequent and severe. His superiors advised him to leave lest his health broke down but he was determined not to abandon his flock.

The harm Fr Pro did to the morale of the anti-Catholic regime was becoming intolerable to President Calles, who ordered him to be captured dead or alive. Finally the day came when Fr Pro was asked by to make the supreme offering. Witnesses at his last Mass watched in wonder as he became transformed and bright like an angel and elevated from the ground during the consecration.

Fr Pro was arrested and condemned to death on false charges of trying to assassinate the previous President. The government wanted to demoralise the Catholic public by publishing pictures of his execution in the newspapers. We owe to this decision a series of extraordinary photographs of him walking calmly to his death, then kneeling for a moment of prayer, then opening his arms wide to receive the bullets that killed him, and his dead body lying peacefully where he fell.

Much to the government's disquiet these pictures soon circulated everywhere as holy cards. The police were powerless to disperse the immense crowd that turned out to his funeral.

At his beatification ceremony on 25 September 1988, Pope John Paul II honoured Fr Pro with these words: "Neither suffering nor serious illness, neither the exhausting ministerial activity, frequently carried out in difficult and dangerous circumstances, could stifle the radiating and contagious joy which he brought to his life for Christ and which nothing could take away."