 During his brief priesthood, he served in parishes in the towns of Sayula, Tuxpan, Yahualica and Cuquío, all of them in his native state of Jalisco.Starting in November 1926, after a revolt in the town of Cuquío against the anti-clerical persecutions of Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles, he was forced to take up an itinerant lifestyle along with Justino Orona, the parish priest of Cuquío.After relocating almost a dozen times, his final residence was the rural settlement of Agua Caliente, in the outskirts of the town of Tequila, where he was sent to hide and was offered refuge by a local landowner.