The Franciscan friars of the Custody of the Holy Land are usually commemorate This episode takes place in the Grotto of the Holy Innocents, connected through a passageway to the Nativity in Bethlehem. A few meters away is the grotto of St. Joseph, the place where the angel spoke in a dream to St. Joseph to ask him to flee to Egypt, "for Herod is going to look for the Child to kill him".
The Church venerates these innocents as martyrs and celebrates them close to Christmas. At the wish of Pius V the celebration was elevated to a feast. Some have doubted the veracity of the account of St. Matthew, but the Second Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum reaffirmed the character historical of the Gospels.
Benedict XVI, in 'Jesus of Nazareth', points out that "it is true that we know nothing about this fact from non-biblical sources, but taking into account so many cruelties committed by Herod, this does not prove that the crime did not take place". The Pope Francis deplored the "slaughter of innocents in the world: in the womb, on the roads of the desperate in search of hope, in the lives of so many children whose childhoods are devastated by war".
