Forgotten saints, faithful to the end

Every November 1, Catholics celebrate All Saints’ Day. We remember famous saints and not-so-famous saints from every century and all over the world. We also remember the people whom we love who have departed from this world. We also pray that they are in heaven.

Only God knows how many men, women, and children are in that great company in heaven right now, gazing on His face. The Church only grants the titles of Saint and Blessed to those who can be universally acknowledged for their faithful, Christlike lives so that they can be our models in life. But surely there have been other Catholics who quietly lived out their faith and practiced heroic virtue.

The most obvious category for these forgotten saints is those who lived and died during periods of persecution. For example, we know that Saint Stephen was the first Christian who died a martyr for Christ, and his bravery is recorded in Acts, chapters 6-7.

But who was the second?

From the year 64 to the year 313 A.D., Christians were considered traitors to the Roman Empire, and confessing that you were a Christian was a crime punishable by death. We all know about the heroic martyrdoms of saints like Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107) and Perpetua of Carthage (d. 203) during this violent period. However, they weren’t the only Christians living in the cities of Antioch and Carthage when they died.

When Bishop Ignatius was arrested and taken to Rome to be publicly executed, there was a flourishing Catholic community in Antioch. The Romans thought killing the Christian leader of Antioch would destroy the faith in that city. They thought wrong. Antioch remained Christian until conquered by Muslims in the seventh century.

Saint Perpetua was a young wife and mother living in Carthage when she sought baptism. She was arrested, baptized in prison, and bravely died in the arena. Perpetua’s mother and brother visited her in prison before her death. They were also Christians, and they were not arrested, at least not yet. Her own family probably read the account of her imprisonment in the contemporaneous document called the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. By the fourth century, the Passion was so famous that it was read in Catholic churches throughout North Africa.

When barbarian tribes invaded Europe, they conquered many Christian cities. Some of those tribal leaders were (or became) Arians, and thus they persecuted Catholics. Saint Hermenegild of Spain (d. 586) was a Catholic prince who refused to practice Arianism and was executed by his own father. According to tradition, Hermenegild’s bravery inspired his brother Reccared to become a Catholic. As King Reccared I, he led his kingdom into the Catholic Church.

During the seven centuries when Muslims controlled Spain, generations of Catholics lived their entire lives as second-class citizens because of their faith. But they survived and remained Catholic. They even had religious communities. A young woman named Columba (d. 853) became a nun in a convent in Córdoba in the ninth century. When a renewal of the persecution of Christians occurred in Córdoba, Saint Columba refused to go into hiding with the rest of her community. Instead, she presented herself before the local Muslim leader, confessed her faith in Christ, and was promptly beheaded. Her story was recorded by a priest named Eulogius, who also kept the faith and was martyred six years later. Yet this demonstrates that the faith—and even religious vocations—quietly persisted in Muslim-controlled regions.

While today we celebrate English Catholics who died as martyrs under King Henry VIII (a total of 39 martyrs, including Saints Thomas More and John Fisher) and Queen Elizabeth I (170 martyrs, including Saints Edmund Campion and Anne Line), those saints are just the tip of the iceberg. Generations of English Catholics refused to give up their faith despite bitter persecution. Wealthy families paid heavy fines to avoid attending Anglican services, and the Catholic faithful who could not afford the fines simply resigned themselves to intermittent stints in jail and possible torture and death. Ordinary Catholics spent years waiting for an opportunity to receive Communion or to confess to a Catholic priest, demonstrating another kind of courage.

Blessed Victoire Rasoamanarivo (d. 1894) was a devout Catholic in Madagascar and was married to an abusive husband. Her difficult marriage was not her only trial. When the government expelled all the foreign missionaries from her country, the churches in Madagascar might have closed permanently. But Victoire and other ordinary Catholics continued to peacefully gather to pray and to teach the faith to children. When missionaries were able to return to the country, they found the Catholic faithful ready and waiting for them because of women like Victoire.

Similarly, lay catechists in Japan (Blessed Simon Yempo), Korea (Saint Francisco Ch-oe Kyong-hwan), Laos (Blessed Luc Sy), Myanmar (Blessed Isidore Ngei Ko Lat), the Philippines (Saint Pedro Calungsod), and Vietnam (Saint Francisco Xavier Can) died as martyrs while trying to share the Good News with their people. How many other laymen and laywomen continued to teach the faith in these countries and managed to escape detection? Or died as martyrs but without any witnesses?

In his book, The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin, Rev. Christopher Zugger recounts the history of Catholics living in Soviet states from the year 1914 to 1945. Yes, there were Catholics in Russia before the communists came to power, millions of them. However, the tsars were hardly friendly to Catholics. Catholics tended to be immigrants from other nations such as Poland, and they were spread throughout Russia’s vast territory. The fact that most Catholics were not native Russians made them appear dangerous to both the tsars and the communists.

Fr. Zugger’s book describes the persecution that Catholics faced during the communist period. Their churches were heavily fined and forced to close, and Church leaders were arrested, interrogated, and sent to prison camps. Bishops and priests were subjected to show trials, and religious communities were repressed. Lay Catholics were imprisoned simply for teaching the faith to their children.

The Forgotten recounts story after story of these overlooked but heroic Catholics. Priests were shot for administering the sacraments. Nuns were sent to Siberia. Parents who tried to have their children baptized did so at great personal risk. Obviously, Orthodox believers and other Christians were persecuted and killed by the communists as well, but that is their story to tell.

In 1979, a river near the city of Kolpashevo in Siberia experienced record flooding. As the riverbanks collapsed, hundreds of corpses appeared, revealing a mass grave of perhaps a thousand victims. The KGB tried to keep the news from spreading by expelling the residents and dumping gravel in the area. However, bodies continued to appear in the river for decades afterward.

This was not the only mass grave from the Communist era discovered in Russia. Other mass graves have been found hidden under playgrounds and parks.

This grisly spectacle is a testament to the ruthlessness of communism. But it is also a reminder that nothing is hidden from God. Even when evil seems to triumph and innocent people suffer, God sees every tear, hears every prayer, and notices every sacrifice that is made for His sake. As our Lord said, “Nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known (Matt 10:26).”

On All Saints’ Day, we should thank God for all the unknown saints, perhaps our own ancestors, who kept their Catholic faith during times of persecution and in some way contributed to our own faith. These uncanonized saints may be forgotten by the world and even by the Church, but they are not forgotten by God.