Martyrs

Pope Francis has authorised the promulgation of the decree for the beatification of the priest from Bạc Liêu killed in hatred of the faith in 1946, during the First Indochina War. He offered his life to save his community; his grave is venerated even by non-Christians. The news was reported on the very day the Vietnamese Church celebrates the feast of the martyrs of previous centuries.

In today's Ordinary Public Consistory fixed for World Missions Sunday the ceremony during which the Franciscans and laymen killed in Syria in 1860 and the founder of the Consolata missionaries, priests and nuns also present today in South Korea, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Taiwan will be proclaimed saints in Rome.

Donor countries meet to discuss Syria, but the country's ‘forgotten war’ continues to provoke suffering and the flight of its population (about 500 a day). Speaking to AsiaNews, the apostolic nuncio in Damascus describes a ‘stagnant political process’ while ‘the only progress is in terms of poverty’. The exodus of Christians ‘another great wound that bleeds’.

A bloody thread runs along the history of Iraq’s Christian community in the last 20 years. The Chaldean patriarch bemoans the lack of ‘guarantees" of "real security" and a “stable future". The wedding party tragedy in the Nineveh plain helps drive Christians away. The cardinal does not mince words about a Christian militia that attacks and divides Christians rather than protect them.

For the Archeparch of Damascus, the family unit was "united and close-knit". There was "an abundance of vocations." Now it is rare to find an "entire family” with exiled fathers, sick or depressed mothers, and children abroad. From 120 in 2019, today only 37 seminarians are left. For Christians in the Syrian capital, praying at the Shrine of the Martyrs is their Wall of Lamentation.

As Pope John Paul II’s commission did in 2000, this new body will draft an ecumenical catalogue in view of the Jubilee of 2025 for those who gave their lives for the Gospel in our time. In 2000, more than 1,700 martyrs were counted in 20th century Asia. The new commission includes Fr Dinh Anh Nhue Nguyen, from Vietnam.