- Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service, Vatican City,
In a jubilee year dedicated to hope, Pope Leo XIV and Christian leaders will commemorate nearly 1,700 "new martyrs and witnesses to the faith" on Sunday, September 14. It is also the birthday of the Pope, who will be 70 years old.
Archbishop Fabio Fabene, secretary of the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, explained the Pontiff's thinking to journalists yesterday. "Pope Leo hopes that the blood of these martyrs will be a seed of peace, reconciliation, fraternity and love."
As St. John Paul II did during the Holy Year 2000, Pope Leo will preside at an ecumenical prayer service for the Jubilee 2025. It will be in commemoration of the Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants who died for their faith between 2000 and 2025.
Pope Francis had created a commission in 2023. The aim was to compile "a catalog of all those who shed their blood to confess Christ and bear witness to his Gospel" in the 25 years since the last Holy Year.
Ecumenical prayer
These martyrs - Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant - will be remembered on September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. The liturgy will be a prayer service in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, a frequent site for ecumenical prayer.
At a press conference on Sept. 8, Andrea Riccardi, historian and vice president of the commission, said the catalog includes 1,624 Christians. The names were submitted by bishops' conferences, religious orders and nunciatures from around the world.
Africa, leader in martyrs
Riccardi, who is also founder of the lay community of Sant'Egidio, provided a continent-by-continent breakdown of the deceased. 643 people in Africa. 357 in Asia and Oceania. 304 in North and South America. 277 in the Middle East and North Africa. And 43 in Europe, although 110 of the total number of those who died in other continents were missionaries from Europe.
Archbishop Fabene said the Vatican was still studying how, when and whether to publish the names in the catalog. They are mindful of the possibility that doing so could endanger other Christians living and ministering in the same geographical areas.
"They put the anchor of their hope in God, not in the world," the archbishop said; "they hoped in the Lord and their reward will be eternal life."
In addition, said Monsignor Marco Gnavi, secretary of the commission, "the hope that was the motive of their lives before their death brought hope." And the context was that their brothers and sisters were often victims of ethnic conflict, religious persecution, organized crime or the deadly denial of their rights.
For example, according to commission members, the list includes Sister Dorothy Stang, a U.S. member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She was shot and killed in the Brazilian Amazon in 2005 for defending the land rights of indigenous people and poor farmers.
Some have canonization in progress
Father Angelo Romano, a member of the commission and an official of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, told Catholic News Service that the catalog is not part of the official Catholic process for recognizing the martyrdom of a potential saint. However, some of the people included already have a cause for canonization underway, and other causes could begin in the future.
The ecumenical commemoration presided over by St. John Paul II in 2000 was held in Rome's Colosseum, a symbol of the persecution and martyrdom of Christians. Father Romano said the Vatican "would have loved" to hold the 2025 prayer service there. But Rome has new archaeological excavations just outside the Colosseum, which severely limits the space available for participants.
Knowing that, as Pope Francis used to say, the number of Christians martyred today is greater than in the first centuries of Christianity, Catholics should not feel attacked, but motivated to solidarity, Father Romano said.
Differentiating aggression from persecution
"A society that can even be aggressive toward the Christian faith is one thing; being persecuted is another," he said. "Persecution means that going to Mass is a risk, that praying is a risk, that being a Christian is a risk, that practicing charity in the name of faith is a serious risk."
"Another mistake that I think we must avoid when we talk about martyrdom - a mistake in the strictly theological sense - is to try to understand martyrdom only in quantitative terms: how many there are," the priest said.
A single martyr is cause for reflection for the whole Church
The numbers help people understand the magnitude of the phenomenon, he said. "But theologically we must be careful not to focus too much on quantity, because even a single martyr is immense, enormous, a cause for reflection for the whole Church."
"In a world where there is so much to worry about, including the rise of violence at all levels, the martyr is a witness to nonviolent hope," Father Romano said. "A martyr chooses not to respond to evil with evil, not to respond to hatred with hatred, but with love."
Several of the groups of new martyrs mentioned at the press conference were Christians killed in churches during terrorist attacks.
Cases submitted by dioceses or other ecclesial realities will be examined.
Archbishop Fabene was asked whether Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, who were shot and killed during a school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis on Aug. 27, could be considered martyrs.
"If a diocese or other local ecclesial realities present these figures to us as witnesses to the faith, we will examine them and see if they can be included in the list," he replied.
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This information was originally published in OSV News. You can consult it here.
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