Pedro de Jesús Maldonado was born in a neighborhood of Chihuahua City known as San Nicolás and was one of seven children of Apolinar Maldonado and Micaela Lucero. When he was 17 years old, he entered the diocesan seminary, where he was known for his piety; once, after completing the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, he told the rector of the seminary "I have thought of always having my heart in heaven and in the Tabernacle." In 1913 and 1914, many seminarians fled to El Paso, Texas, because of religious persecution in Mexico, but Maldonado remained in Chihuahua and studied music. Later, he continued his religious studies and was ordained as a priest on January 25, 1918. His ordination took place in the Cathedral of St. Patrick, in the Diocese of El Paso, because the Bishop of Chihuahua was sick in Mexico City.
Priesthood
Although Maldonado celebrated his first Masses in El Paso, his first Solemn Mass was in the Church of the Holy Family in Chihuahua on February 11, 1918. Maldonado worked with the Tarahumara Natives and sought to reduce the amount of alcohol they consumed. He helped the poor with money and clothing, and raised and educated a poor orphan. Maldonado took a special interest in the religious education of both children and adults, explaining Catholic doctrine by using photographs. At harvest time, farmers would ask him to bless fields invaded by locusts, and there are accounts that claim his prayers expelled the locusts more than once. During the Cristero War, Maldonado and other priests in Chihuahua were the targets of anti-Catholic violence. Revolutionaries changed Santa Isabel's name to General Trias as part of an effort to erase references to Catholicism from the geography of the state. Maldonado was beaten several times – even inside his church – by Freemasons, but he continued to carry out his ministry in Santa Isabel until his death.
Death
On February 10, 1937, Maldonado was arrested. Government officials brought him barefoot to the town hall, where they beat him, fracturing his skull and causing his left eye to pop out. He had brought with him a pyx containing the Eucharist, and his attackers took the hosts, put them in his mouth and ordered him to eat them, not realizing they were fulfilling the priest's last wish. When the men saw the seriousness of Maldonado's condition, they allowed him to be taken to Chihuahua City, where he died on February 11, 1937, from severe brain trauma and injuries throughout his body caused by the beating. According to his death certificate, Maldonado died at 5:15 pm, at the age of 44. In official documents, his death was deemed a murder. To many parishioners in Chihuahua, as well as to his fellow priests and his diocesan bishop,, he was a martyr because he had been killed because of his faithfulness in carrying out his ministry and because of hatred toward his faith. His tombstone reads, "You are a priest." After his death, Maldonado's tomb became a place of prayer, surrounded by candles, flowers, and votive offerings. Maldonado's death had effects both in and beyond Chihuahua. It occurred during the last part of President Lázaro Cárdenas's term, and provoked skepticism of Cárdenas's efforts to bring peace to Mexico.
Canonization
Some years later, Guízar, convinced that Maldonado would eventually be canonized, asked Monsignor Martín L. Quiñones to gather all the material he could about Maldonado's life and martyrdom. In 1975, Adalberto Almeida y Merino, the Archbishop of Chihuahua, officially named Msgr. Quiñones the promoter of the cause of canonization for Maldonado. For several years, Quiñones worked with the Episcopal Commission for the Introduction of the Beatification Processes of the Mexican Martyrs, since Maldonado's cause had been joined to those of the other priests and laypeople martyred during the same period of persecution. Since these causes had been delayed because some of the processes were slower than others, on October 12, 1984, the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints exhorted the Archdiocese of Chihuahua to speed up Fr. Maldonado's process, formally initiating the cause of canonization. On November 22, 1992, Fr. Maldonado was beatified by Pope John Paul II. On May 25, 2000, John Paul canonized him.
Relics
The relics of Pedro de Jesús Maldonado are found in a wooden urn in the Chapel of the Lord of Mapimí in the Cathedral of Chihuahua. There is a traveling urn that contains some of his bodily remains, and this reliquary visits the parishes throughout the diocese. In the parish of Santa Isabel is kept the confessional used by the saint. The Fraternity of St. Pius X venerates in the Chapel of San José in Chihuahua the cloth with blood that covered Maldonado's body in the hospital. During the beatification ceremony, John Paul II kissed the relic of the Chihuahuan martyr. In 2018 on the 100th anniversary of his ordination a relic was presented to the El Paso Diocese from the Diocese of Chihuahua. The wooden urn holding the relic was placed at Saint Patrick Cathedral in El Paso, Texas.
