In a statement, the Sant’Egidio community remarked that the event takes on a very special significance in times marked by the suffering of so many Christians in the world, and in the light of Easter.
Saint Bartholomew is not a parish Church but, as per the request of Saint Pope John Paul II in 1999, it serves as a shrine to men and women who died in defense of their faith during totalitarian regimes and Latin American dictatorships as well as more recent martyrs of terrorism. During the course of the liturgy friends and relatives of some modern martyrs will give testimonies. They include:
- Karl Schneider, son of Paul, the Reformed Church Pastor killed in the nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in 1939 for having described the objectives of nazi Germany as irreconcilable with the words of the Bible;
- Roselyne, sister of Father Jacques Hamel, assassinated in Rouen, France, on 26 July last year while celebrating Holy Mass, and
- Francisco Hernandez Guevara, friend of William Quijano, a young member of the Sant’Egidio Community in Salvador who was killed in 2009 while working to keep young people away from criminal rings.
After the homily, Pope Francis will pay tribute to the six chapels in the Basilica where the relics of the martyrs are kept. During the liturgy, a candle will be lit for every prayer recited in their memory. These include Armenians and other Christians who were victims of massacres perpetrated during World War I, martyrs of peace and dialogue like the Trappist monks of Notre Dame de l’Atlas in Algeria, Don Andrea Santoro who was gunned down in Turkey, Don Pino Puglisi who was killed by the Mafia and many many missionaries who lost their lives in defense of their faith.
Well-known names like that of San Salvador bishop Oscar Romero will resonate together with many less famous ones and a special prayer will be said for Mar Gregorios Ibrahim, Paul Yazigi and Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, all of them abducted in Syria and of whom all traces have been lost.
After the liturgy Pope Francis will meet with a group of refugees who have found welcome in Rome thanks to the humanitarian corridors project promoted by Sant’Egidio, with women victims of human trafficking and with young migrants who have travelled to Italy unaccompanied.
The New Martyrs
At the end of the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday, April 1, 1994, Pope John Paul II gave a brief spontaneous address in which he made reference to the saving Mystery of the Cross, to the faith of Christians expressed in martyrdom and to the unity in which Christians are called to bear witness to their faith in the Lord, who died and is risen.
... Here where our ancestors in the faith witnessed, by their martyrdom even to the point of death, to the love with which Christ loved us. Here in this spot of the globe, in ancient Rome, I am thinking especially of the 'Hill of Crosses' in Lithuania, to which I made a pastoral visit last September. I was moved by that other Colosseum, not of Roman times, but a Colosseum of our age, of this last century.
The Holy Father returned to this subject with even deeper insistence in his Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio adveniente . In number 37 he recalls the first millennium in which the Church grew thanks to the seeds sown by the martyrs and the heritage of sanctity which marked the first Christian generations.
The Pope continued this thought: The greatest homage which all the Churches can give to Christ on the threshold of the third millennium will be to manifest the Redeemer's all-powerful presence through the fruits of faith, hope and charity present in men and women of many different tongues and races who have followed Christ in the various forms of the Christian vocation (TMA 37).
Excerpt of Pope John Paul II’s homily
for the Ecumenical Commemoration of the witness
to the faith in the twentieth century
May 7, 2000 – Colosseum in Rome
Gathered as we are at the Colosseum for this meaningful jubilee celebration, our coming together this evening is for all of us a source of great emotion. The monuments and ruins of ancient Rome speak to humanity of the sufferings and persecutions endured with fortitude by our forebears in the faith, the Christians of the first generations. These ancient remains remind us how true are the words of Tertullian who wrote: 'sanguis martyrum semen christianorum' — the blood of the martyrs is the seed of new Christians (Apol., 50,13: CCL 1, 171).
… The experience of the martyrs and the witnesses to the faith is not a characteristic only of the Church’s beginnings but marks every epoch of her history. In the twentieth century, and maybe even more than in the first period of Christianity, there has been a vast number of men and women who bore witness to the faith through sufferings that were often heroic. How many Christians in the course of the twentieth century, on every continent, showed their love of Christ by the shedding of blood! They underwent forms of persecution both old and new, they experienced hatred and exclusion, violence and murder. Many countries of ancient Christian tradition once more became lands where fidelity to the Gospel demanded a very high price. In our century the witness to Christ borne even to the shedding of blood has become a common inheritance of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 37).
The generation to which I belong experienced the horror of war, the concentration camps, persecution. In my homeland, during the Second World War, priests and Christians were deported to extermination camps. In Dachau alone some three thousand priests were interned. Their sacrifice was joined to that of many Christians from other European countries, some of whom belonged to other Churches and Ecclesial Communities.
I myself am a witness of much pain and many trials, having seen these in the years of my youth. My priesthood, from its very beginning, was marked by the great sacrifice of countless men and women of my generation (Gift and Mystery, p. 39). The experience of the Second World War and of the years following brought me to consider carefully and with gratitude the shining example of those who, from the beginning of the twentieth century to its end, met persecution, violence, death, because of their faith and because their behaviour was inspired by the truth of Christ.
… Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven (Mt 5:11-12). How well these words of Christ fit the countless witnesses to the faith in the last century, insulted and persecuted, but never broken by the power of evil!
Where hatred seemed to corrupt the whole of life leaving no escape from its logic, they proved that love is stronger than death. Within terrible systems of oppression which disfigured man, in places of pain, amid the hardest of privations, through senseless marches, exposed to cold and hunger, tortured, suffering in so many ways, they loudly proclaimed their loyalty to Christ crucified and risen. In a few moments we shall hear some of their striking testimonies.
… Countless numbers refused to yield to the cult of the false gods of the twentieth century and were sacrificed by Communism, Nazism, by the idolatry of State or race. Many others fell in the course of ethnic or tribal wars, because they had rejected a way of thinking foreign to the Gospel of Christ. Some went to their death because, like the Good Shepherd, they decided to remain with their people, despite intimidation. On every continent and throughout the entire twentieth century, there have been those who preferred to die rather than betray the mission which was theirs. Men and women Religious lived their consecration to the shedding of blood. Men and women believers died offering their lives for love of their brothers and sisters, especially the poorest and the weakest. Many women lost their lives in order to defend their dignity and purity.
Excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Letter
Spe Salvi - On Christian Hope
November 30, 2007
To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves—these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself. Yet once again the question arises: are we capable of this? Is the other important enough to warrant my becoming, on his account, a person who suffers? Does truth matter to me enough to make suffering worthwhile? Is the promise of love so great that it justifies the gift of myself? In the history of humanity, it was the Christian faith that had the particular merit of bringing forth within man a new and deeper capacity for these kinds of suffering that are decisive for his humanity. The Christian faith has shown us that truth, justice and love are not simply ideals, but enormously weighty realities. It has shown us that God —Truth and Love in person—desired to suffer for us and with us. Bernard of Clairvaux coined the marvellous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis—God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus's Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God's compassionate love—and so the star of hope rises. Certainly, in our many different sufferings and trials we always need the lesser and greater hopes too—a kind visit, the healing of internal and external wounds, a favourable resolution of a crisis, and so on. In our lesser trials these kinds of hope may even be sufficient. But in truly great trials, where I must make a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we have spoken here. For this too we need witnesses—martyrs—who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. Yet this capacity to suffer depends on the type and extent of the hope that we bear within us and build upon. The saints were able to make the great journey of human existence in the way that Christ had done before them, because they were brimming with great hope (SS, 9).
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