It’s a stark reality that — no matter how many times it’s repeated — never loses the power to shock: The 20th century produced double the number of Christian martyrs than all the previous nineteen centuries put together.
In this century and the present day, religious persecution and discrimination — a frequent precursor to martyrdom — currently impacts nearly 5.4 billion people in 62 countries worldwide, according to the “Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025.”
Released at an Oct. 21 Vatican press conference by Aid to the Church in Need, a papal charity and pastoral aid organization assisting persecuted Christians around the world, the report is simultaneously alarming and inspiring: Alarming, because so many are still suffering so much violence; inspiring, because their faithful witness is nonetheless so strong.
“The attention being paid to martyrdom is very important for our work, but also for the church,” Edward Clancy, outreach director for Aid to the Church in Need USA, told OSV News. “Because it’s through this martyrdom, as Tertullian said, that we, the faith may grow; so we understand where we began, and where we’re going.”
Tertullian, an early Christian author who wrote during the second and third centuries, and was the first theologian to write in Latin, declared in “The Apology” that, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
Asked how Catholics might respond to the global martyrdom crisis, which — despite their best intentions — may seem remote in the midst of their own busy lives, Clancy offered three suggestions.
“Everything in our faith starts with a prayer — with a communication directly or indirectly with God … Prayer for the martyrs helps to change our hearts and open us to the will of God,” said Clancy. “That’s a very important first component.”
“The next step,” he continued, “is awareness. That is important for us, Aid to the Church in Need, as we do our part in helping to bring these stories to the people, to be aware of what’s happening to our brothers and sisters in the faith around the world.”
“The third thing,” concluded Clancy, “would be to help these communities where the faith is so restricted — where they need our support.”
The “Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025” analyzes the situation in 196 countries and documents serious violations in 62 of them; 24 are classified as countries of “persecution” and 38 as “discrimination.” Only two nations, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka, showed improvements compared with the previous edition of the report.
“The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, protected under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is not only under pressure; in many countries it is disappearing,” warned Regina Lynch, executive president of ACN International, during the Vatican launch.
On July 5, 2023, Pope Francis created a working group at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Dubbed the “Commission of New Martyrs — Witnesses to the Faith,” it was tasked with compiling a catalogue of all Christians — not only Catholics — who in the last quarter of a century shed their blood to confess Jesus Christ.
“Martyrs in the Church are witnesses of the hope that comes from faith in Christ and incites to true charity,” the late pope said. “Hope keeps alive the profound conviction that good is stronger than evil, because God in Christ has conquered sin and death.”
As Aid to the Church in Need reported in a Sept. 12 press release, the Vatican commission identified and confirmed 1,624 cases of Christians, from various different Christian churches, “murdered because of their faith between the year 2000 and 2025.”
It found that “643 were killed in Sub-Saharan Africa, 357 in Asia and Oceania, 304 in the Americas, 277 in the Middle East and the Maghreb, and 43 in Europe.”
Andrea Riccardi, vice president of the commission and founder of the peace-building Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic association, said the point of the work is “to remember them so that their memory is not diluted and the names of those who have fallen for the faith are not lost.”
Read more: https://www.osvnews.com/modern-martyrs-give-witness-more-christians-than-ever-suffer-for-the-faith-worldwide/
By Kimberley Heatherington | osvnews
