American priest Charles Murr recounted in an interview on the program El Gato al Agua, on El Toro TV, an episode he experienced during his ministry. The conversation revolved around Freemasonry, the situation of the Church, and his book Asesinato en grado 33, when he recalled the conversion of a Mexican military man who belonged to Freemasonry just hours before dying.
Murr, who served as secretary to Cardinal Edouard Gagnon during the investigation into the infiltration of Freemasonry in certain circles of the Vatican in the 1970s, interrupted the historical analysis to recount a personal experience that, he explained, profoundly marked his priesthood.
An urgent call from a hospital in Jalisco
The priest recalled that he had only been ordained for two years when he received a call from a doctor in Tepatitlán, in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The physician asked him to come immediately to a clinic to provide spiritual care to a retired military man who was dying.
Before entering the room, the doctor explained that the man had spent his entire career in the Mexican Army and had participated in the repression of the Cristero War. Due to severe gangrene, according to medical prognosis, he had only a couple of hours left to live.
Outside the room, his wife and children were waiting. Murr asked them to pray the Rosary while he tried to speak with the patient.
“Let me see how a man goes to hell”
As soon as he saw him, the soldier greeted the priest with a long string of insults and blasphemies.
Murr admitted that the scene deeply shocked him. “My knees were shaking,” he recalled during the interview. He even confessed that he felt the temptation to respond in the same tone, although he immediately understood that his mission was different.
After a first failed attempt to start a conversation, he addressed the patient again, who once more responded with insults. Then, while entrusting the situation to the Blessed Sacrament he carried with him, he spoke words that, he explained, completely changed the course of the encounter.
“Look, General, I’ve already finished all my work for today. I have the whole afternoon free. Since you’re going to die in two hours, let me see how a man goes to hell,” he said before sitting in a chair beside the bed and remaining silent.
Reconciliation with God
From that moment, a calm conversation began between them.
The priest explained that, little by little, the soldier opened up and agreed to receive the sacraments. Murr was able to hear his confession, administer Communion and Confirmation, and after speaking with the patient’s wife, discovered that the marriage had never been celebrated by the Church.
“Do you want to get married?” he asked the couple. Upon receiving an affirmative response, he celebrated the canonical marriage right there.
Before concluding, he asked the wife if the soldier had been baptized. When she replied that they had never been certain, he decided to administer conditional baptism as well.
“He died in a state of grace,” the priest summarized, recalling the outcome of that afternoon.
The final “¡Viva Cristo Rey!”
Shortly before the soldier’s death, Murr leaned over him and whispered in his ear the cry that became the symbol of the martyrs of the Cristero War.
“¡Viva Cristo Rey!”
Against all expectations, the dying man responded clearly: “¡Viva!”
For the priest, that response was the final sign of a reconciliation he considered the fruit of God’s mercy and the persevering prayer of the family, who remained praying the Rosary outside the room throughout the encounter.
The account was shared by Charles Murr as a demonstration that, even in the final moments of life, grace can transform a person’s heart when it finds openness to act.