– Supernatural New Martyrs Commission - Witnesses of the Faith began its work on November 9. It is a commission with an ecumenical outlook since it will take into account the testimonies offered by Christians of other confessions.
The new commission will count on the work that, in this line of ecumenical martyrdom, has been done by the Fides Agency which, each year, compiles the names of Christians of different confessions who have been killed because of their faith.
These reports will now be joined by the work of bishops, religious congregations and those who are custodians of the memory of these Christians.
Martyrs of the 21st century
The first phase of this task will concern Christians who gave their lives from the year 2000 to the present day. There are currently more than 550 of these martyrs for whom the circumstances of their death and their service to the Church and the people of God are known. A website has now been created to accompany the work of the Commission and provide essential information.
In addition to this, the first lines of commitment and the methodology to be followed by this new commission are already known, for which external synergies have been foreseen, especially with regard to the reconstruction of the continental, regional and national contexts in which this surrender of life for Christ took place.
In this context, the contribution of many faithful of the Eastern Catholic Churches was recalled, with special attention to the Middle East and Asia. The ecumenical value of martyrdom in the broad sense and the need to take into account the richness of the witness offered by Christians of other confessions were also recalled.
In addition to this, Msgr. Fabio Fabene, Secretary of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, made available to the Commission the human and technical resources necessary to carry out the task entrusted to it. Also, together with the historian and founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio, Andrea Riccardi, previous research was reviewed, drawing suggestions for future studies.
Martyrs: a treasure of Christian memory
A work of cooperation that wants to serve as recognition of the life of these witnesses, "whose life and death are marked by the Gospel, by love for the weakest, by the search for peace, by the painful confrontation with multiple designs of evil, without ever abandoning faith in the good," according to the note from the Holy See that informed of the beginning of the work of this new commission.
Already in July, Pope Francis had announced the creation of this ecumenical Commission of New Martyrs. In the letter, the pontiff emphasizes that "the martyrs in the Church are witnesses of the hope that comes from faith in Christ and incites to true charity".
They "have accompanied the life of the Church in every age and flourish as 'mature and excellent fruits of the Lord's vineyard' even today". And even today, the memory of the martyrs represents a "treasure" that the Christian community is called to guard.
Some witnesses of Christ today
Every year since the 1980s, the Fides Agency has issued a report on missionaries killed in the course of their pastoral work. The reports summarize, in a brief way, the biography of these new witnesses to the faith, most of whom were killed not during high-risk missions, but while immersed and immersed in the ordinariness of their lives and apostolic work, offered in self-forgetfulness and for the good of all, including - at times - their own flesh and blood.
In these reports we find, for example, the name of Father Jacques Hamel, whose throat was slit in his church in Rouen, near the altar of the Eucharist in 2016 or the murder of Father Roberto Malgesini, a Lombard priest stabbed to death by one of the countless people he had assisted free of charge and who is included in the 2020 report.
The dossier published at the end of 2022 also included the story of Marie-Sylvie Kavuke Vakatsuraki, the medical nun killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo by a gang of jihadists who attacked the health center where she was about to operate on a woman.
