Pope Francis at the Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023, Angelus and martyrs beatified in Seville on Nov. 18, 2023. / Credit: Youtube Vatican News / Archdiocese of Seville
ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 20, 2023 / 18:30 pm (CNA).
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"Martyrdom of Josaphat Kuntsevych" (c. 1861) by Józef Simmler. / Credit: National Museum in Warsaw
Rome Newsroom, Nov 17, 2023 / 15:30 pm (CNA).
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Pope Francis at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on June 28, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Jul 5, 2023 / 04:02 am (CNA).
The Vatican announced Wednesday the creation of a commission to research and catalog the stories of Christian martyrs from the third millennium.
In a letter published July 5, Pope Francis said he has established the “Commission of New Martyrs — Witnesses of the Faith” within the Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints.
The commission’s task will be to create an archive of the lives of Christian martyrs, both Catholic and non-Catholic, killed in the last quarter century, the pope said.
Pope Francis noted that he is not modifying canon law on the formal recognition of martyrdom in the Catholic Church, but wants the testimonies of those killed for being Christian to stand “side by side with the martyrs officially recognized by the Church…”
“As I have said many times,” he wrote, “the martyrs ‘are more numerous in our time than in the early centuries:’ they are bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, lay people and families, who in the different countries of the world, with the gift of their lives, have offered the supreme proof of charity.”
The pope said he created the commission in light of the Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, which will focus on the theme of hope.
“Hope keeps alive the deep conviction that good is stronger than evil because God in Christ has overcome sin and death,” he said.
Francis also recalled that St. Pope John Paul II had formed a similar commission on new martyrs for the Great Jubilee 2000.
The earlier commission, which received 13,000 testimonies of men and women who gave their lives for Christ in the 20th century, shared some of the stories during an ecumenical prayer service in the Colosseum on May 7, 2000.
Pope Francis said the 2025 Jubilee Year will include a similar event in order to remember what he has called the “ecumenism of blood.”
“Even in our time, in which we are witnessing a change of epoch, Christians continue to show, in contexts of great risk, the vitality of Baptism that unites us,” the pope said.
He noted that some Christians, though aware of the danger to their lives, have yet publicly lived their faith and participated in the Sunday liturgy; others have been killed while performing works of charity to the poor; and still others have been “silent victims,” losing their lives in violent upheavals.
“To all of them we owe a great debt and cannot forget them,” he emphasized.
The pope referenced St. John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, which said that “everything must be done so that the legacy of the cloud of ‘unknown soldiers of the great cause of God’ is not lost.”
“In a world in which it sometimes seems that evil prevails, I am certain,” he said, “that the elaboration of this catalog, also in the context of the now upcoming Jubilee, will help believers to also read our time in the light of Easter, drawing from the treasure chest of such generous faithfulness to Christ the reasons for life and goodness.”
Pope Francis receives relics of the Coptic martyrs from Pope Tawadros II, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, May 11, 2023. Pope Francis also announced that the 21 men will be added to the Church’s official list of saints. / Cr… […]
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The faces of 140 Spanish priests and laity killed during the religious persecution in Spain in the 20th century. / Credit: Archbishopric of Madrid
CNA Newsroom, Dec 16, 2022 / 16:15 pm (CNA).
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Pope Francis, pictured in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 14, 2017. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Vatican City, Jul 11, 2022 / 05:21 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Monday invited young people to learn the story of Bl. Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector who was imprisoned and killed for refusing to fight for the Nazis in World War II.
“Despite cajoling and torture, Franz preferred to be killed than to kill. He considered the war totally unjustified. If all the young men called to arms had done as he did, Hitler would not have been able to carry out his diabolical plans. To triumph, evil needs accomplices,” the pope said in a communication published July 11.
Francis’ message was sent to the EU Youth Conference, taking place in Prague, Czech Republic, July 11-13. The theme of the 2022 conference, which is for teens and young adults from the European Union, is “Working Together for a Sustainable and Inclusive Europe.”
The pope invited young people, in light of the war in Ukraine, “to get to know the extraordinary figure of a young objector, a young European with ‘a broad outlook,’” Franz Jägerstätter, who was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
“Franz was a young Austrian who, because of his Catholic faith, made a conscientious objection to the injunction to swear allegiance to Hitler and go to war,” Pope Francis said.
He explained that because of his “profound convictions,” when called to fight, Franz refused; “he felt it was unjust to kill innocent lives.”
The husband and father of four girls was eventually executed for his refusal to fight. Pope Francis pointed out that he was killed “in the same prison where his contemporary Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German Lutheran theologian and anti-Nazi, was also imprisoned and met the same tragic end.”
These two men were killed because they remained faithful to the ideals of their faith, he said.
The pope invited young people “to look upwards and beyond, to keep seeking the real meaning of your life, where you come from and where you are going, and the Truth, because we cannot live authentically if we do not seek the Truth.”
Though Ukraine is not part of the European Union, Francis urged the young adults taking part in the conference to commit themselves to promoting peace and the end of the war.
He said “it is legitimate to rebel” in cases like this, “where, as usual, a few powerful people decide and send thousands of young people to fight and die.”
The pope recalled that someone once said that “if the world were ruled by women, there would not be so many wars, because those who have the mission of giving life cannot make death choices.”
“In a similar vein, I like to think that if the world were ruled by young people, there would not be so many wars,” he added. “Those who have their whole life ahead of them do not want to ruin it and throw it away, but to live it to the full.”
He closed his message by asking young people to be “generous in generating new lives, always and only as the fruit of love.”
“The love of husband and wife, the love of family and children, but also love of Europe, so that it can be for everyone a land of peace, freedom and dignity,” he said.
© Catholic World Report