Biography
Héctor Valdivielso Sáez
About Héctor Valdivielso Sáez
Héctor Valdivielso Sáez was born in Buenos Aires in 1910 to a family that later returned to Spain. The historical account of his childhood places him in Briviesca, where he encountered the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He entered their formation as a boy and later used the religious name Benito de Jesús. As a Lasallian brother, he served in a community devoted to educating children rather than as an ordained priest.
He belonged to the group of Brothers teaching at Turón, a mining town in Asturias. The Vatican’s account says eight Brothers and a Passionist priest were killed there in 1934 amid revolutionary violence. Their school and shared religious life explain why they were together when the violence reached the community. Héctor’s Argentine birthplace gives him a particular place in the group’s later remembrance, but it should not erase the identities of his companions.
La Salle identifies him among the martyrs as Brother Benito de Jesús and dates his birth to October 31, 1910. He was killed at Turón on October 9, 1934. The Holy See canonized the group in 1999. Its account remembers their work as educators, a vocation that continued in dangerous circumstances. A second member of the same Turón group, the Passionist Inocencio of Mary Immaculate, appears separately in this batch.
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