Manuel Morales was a Mexican layman and baker born in 1898 in Mesillas, Zacatecas. A former seminary student from Durango, he was a married man with three children who became a prominent leader within the National League for Religious Liberty. During the Cristero War, he was arrested by government authorities and subjected to torture in a local prison. He was eventually executed by a firing squad on August 15, 1926, near Chalchihuites because he refused to abandon his religious convictions.