He is now on the road to sainthood, thanks to a norm issued by Pope Francis this summer that opens the door to canonisation for those who have "voluntarily and freely offered their lives for others and have persevered until death in this regard."

Fernando was sent to Cambodia while still a seminarian. He worked as a teacher in a technical school for the handicapped.

In the school, people who were disabled, most especially landmine victims, learned skills which help them earn a living.

Among his students was Sarom, a sixteen-year-old boy who was a victim of a landmine. He wanted to finish his studies there but he was asked to leave by the school authorities for his disruptive attitude.

According to Fernando, Sarom was tricky but he still had a place for him in his heart.

On October 17, 1996, Sarom came to the school for a meeting. Angered, he suddenly he reached into a bag he was carrying, pulled out a grenade, and began to move towards a classroom full of students; the windows of the room were barred, leaving the students no escape.

Fernando came up behind Sarom and grabbed him. Sarom tried to free himself but the missionary held on to Sarom.

Sarom accidentally dropped the grenade behind Richie, and in a flash, Richie was dead.

While the Philippines is a Catholic-majority country, the island nation only claims two canonised saints thus far, both of whom died in the 17th century.

However, numerous causes have been opened in recent years, with many people in the various steps of the process of canonisation.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• 2oth Century Martyrs Blogspot
• Jesuit Asia Pacific Conference

Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer on November 14, 1745, Guillaume-Louis-Nicolas Leclercq entered the novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Lasallians), where he took the religious name of Brother Salomon and eventually became Superior-General.

Following the promulgation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which gave the state control over the Church in France, he refused - along with most Lasallians - to take the required oath.

He was arrested on August 1, 1792 on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activism and imprisoned in the Carmes Convent in Paris along with many bishops, priests and religious. On September 2, he and 200 other church figures were killed by sword blow in the garden of the convent.

Salomon Leclercq thus became the first martyr for his congregation leading to his veneration by Lasallians around the world, particularly in Venezuela. It was there in 2011 that the Diocese of Caracas attributed the miraculous healing of a young girl bitten by a snake to the intercession of Blessed Salomon Leclercq to whom the religious sisters taking care of her had been praying.

What were the reasons for the September 1792 massacre?

Following the fall of the French monarchy in August 1792, hundreds of priests, religious and lay people, who had been arrested by the revolutionaries as enemies of the people and opponents of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, were imprisoned in various religious houses, including the Carmes Convent, which had been transformed into improvised prisons.

On September 2, amid panic among the revolutionaries caused by the Austro-Prussian invasion and by rumors of an internal conspiracy, the prisons were taken over by the sans-culottes who established a kangaroo court leading to the executions of more than 1,000 people. Of these, 191 people, comprising three bishops, 127 secular priests, 56 religious and five lay people, and including Salomon Leclercq, have since been recognized as martyrs of the faith. They were beatified in 1926. Continue reading

Sources

• Global Pulse, article by Clémence Houdaille, a journalist who works for Radio Notre Dame, Paris
• Image: Catholic News Agency

The April 29 event is being organised by Aid to the Church in Need and seeks to "call attention to the drama of anti-Christian persecution".

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The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, which rejected the definitions of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451.

In his address, Pope Francis told Pope Matthias I "what unites us is greater than what divides us," and added that "shared sufferings have enabled Christians, otherwise divided in so many ways, to grow closer to one another."

"Just as in the early Church the shedding of the blood of martyrs became the seed of new Christians, so today the blood of the many martyrs of all the Churches has become the seed of Christian unity," Pope Francis said. "The ecumenism of the martyrs is a summons to us, here and now, to advance on the path to ever greater unity."

Continue reading

The Pope said this during a meeting with members of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC III) in Rome.

The Pope said ecumenism is not a "secondary element" in the life of the Church.

Referring to the current persecution of Christians around the world, the Pope said the signs of the times were calling all Christians to unity and common witness.

"There is a strong bond that already unites us which goes beyond all divisions," he told the ARCIC members.

Continue reading

Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah said this in a book length interview "Dieu ou Rien" (God or Nothing) published in France last month.

Italian Vatican commentator Sandro Magister has suggested that Cardinal Sarah might be in the conversation as to who could be the next Pope, after Pope Francis.

Cardinal Sarah was appointed prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis in November.

The African cardinal stated in the interview that "the martyrs are the sign that God is alive and still present among us".

"[But] while Christians are dying for their faith and for their fidelity to Jesus, in the West there are churchmen who are seeking to reduce the demands of the Gospel to a minimum".

The former secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples was especially critical of responses at last year's extraordinary synod on the family.

Cardinal Sarah stated that "while hundreds of thousands of Christians live every day in bodily fear, some want to prevent suffering for the divorced and remarried, who are said to feel discriminated against in being excluded from sacramental communion".

Cardinal Sarah vowed that the "Church of Africa will firmly oppose any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and of the magisterium".

He also questioned the approach by some at the extraordinary synod regarding pastoral practice towards homosexual people.

"In reality, the true scandal is not the existence of sinners, since mercy and forgiveness always exist for them, but rather the confusion between good and evil that it made by Catholic pastors," the cardinal said.

He warned that if pastors are "no longer capable of understanding the radical nature of the Gospel", then that leads to an absence of true mercy.

Cardinal Sarah also noted that the Church can "no longer hold back from a practical reflection on subjectivism as the root of most of the current errors".

Sources

• L'Espresso
• Image: VisionGuinee

"We should be glad and rejoice.

"As the Shanghai Catholic youths said: ‘We are greatly honored to have been born and lived at this important time.'" — Cardinal Kung Pin-mei, Sermon for Catholics in China (Rome, June 30, 1991).

When I published my book, China's Saints, in 2011, I thought that only a few interested scholars would read it.

I wrote it, after all, as an academic study, a work for curmudgeonly professors like myself more inclined to read objective history than pious hagiography.

So I was surprised when a Jesuit priest mentioned to a large crowd of academics and ecclesiastics recently gathered in Chicago that he had been reading my book "for his daily devotions."

Results seldom match expectations, and that is the theme of my final entry in this four-part series on China's Catholic martyrs from Mao to now.

In truth, even the most objective historian—secular or religious—must admit that decades of suppression, persecution, and suffering have resulted in a vibrant Catholic community.

I shall here outline the "ongoing growth of these communities," as Father Jeremy Clarke puts it, "even in spite of attempts to make them disappear."[1]

In the first three installments of this series I focused on a very dark era in the history of Chinese Catholicism: the attack against Yangjiaping Trappist Abbey and the massacre of many holy monks, Chairman Mao's malicious media campaign against the Church, the wave of arrests that followed, and the atrocious martyrdoms of such priests as Father Beda Chang and Father Wang Shiwei.

I have also recounted the Maoist destruction of Catholic churches during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and more recent efforts to suppress popular Catholic devotions in China, such as the annual pilgrimage to honor Our Lady of China at Donglü. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Opuscula Theologica

This was in nation where VIPs are rarely seen in anything other than expensive, luxury cars.

After his arrival on August 14, the Pope left the airport in a compact black Kia that many South Koreans would consider too humble a conveyance for a globally powerful figure.

In a live television broadcast, the Pope climbed into the backseat of the boxy Kia Soul, rolled down the window and waved.

Francis's frugality and humble demeanour have received wide coverage in South Korea, a fiercely competitive country that celebrates ostentatious displays of status and wealth.

This national trait can be seen in booming industries such as private tutoring and plastic surgery.

Korea has grown from poverty after the 1950s war, to become the world's 13th largest economy

The images of the smiling Pope in his little car struck a chord online, with many playing on the car's name.

One South Korean user tweeted: "The Pope rode the Soul because he is full of soul."

The Pope also caught a commuter train to a Mass in a soccer stadium, rather than use a helicopter.

The same day, Francis warned Korea's bishops about what can happen to ministry in a prosperous society, which is increasingly secular and materialistic.

"In such circumstances, it is tempting for pastoral ministers to adopt not only effective models of management, planning and organisation drawn from the business world, but also a lifestyle and mentality guided more by worldly criteria of success, and indeed power, than by the criteria which Jesus sets out in the Gospel."

If "the face of the church is first and foremost a face of love, more and more young people will be drawn to the heart of Jesus", the Pope said.

Also in Korea, he warned lay Catholics not to let competition marginalise the poor.

He met relatives of those lost in the Korean ferry disaster and agreed to baptise a father of one of the victims.

The Pope was greeted by huge crowds at the Sixth Asian Youth Day celebrations, and he also beatified 124 Korean martyrs.

Francis travelled among the crowds using a Kia-made popemobile.

He also visited a symbolic cemetery for abortion victims.

Sources

• Associated Press
• Irish Times
• The Tablet
• Wall Street Journal
• Time
• Daily Mail
• Image: Associated Press

Enzo Bianchi was appointed on July 22 as a consultor of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The Tablet reported him saying the Pope could allow a council of bishops, including Orthodox bishops, to assist in governing the Church.

Reform of the Synod of Bishops and the growth of synodality within the Catholic Church would greatly enhance the opportunity for union between Rome and the Orthodox Churches.

Fr Bianchi, Prior of the Bose monastery in Italy, said: "I believe that the Pope wants to achieve unity by reforming the papacy."

Pope Francis feels that union with the Orthodox Churches in particular is "an urgent goal", he added.

"I believe that the Pope has one particular concern, that unity should not be achieved in the spirituality of unity but rather it is a command by Christ which we must carry out," he told the Italian daily La Stampa.

Reform would involve a new balance between collegiality and primacy, Bianchi explained.

"The Orthodox have synodality, but not primacy. We Catholics have primacy, but a lack of synodality.

"There can be no synodality without supremacy, and there can be no supremacy without synodality.

"It is conceivable that we could have an episcopal body that helps the Pope in governing the Church without calling into question his primacy," Bianchi said.

"This would help to create a new style of papal primacy and the government of bishops."

Pope Paul VI's Nota Praevia, attached to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, ensured that none of the document's teaching on collegiality should impact on the rights and privileges of the Pope.

The Synod of Bishops therefore remains a solely consultative body and relies on papal endorsement.

Last year Pope Francis suggested strengthening the synod, saying it was a "half-baked" development of the Second Vatican Council.

Sources

• The Tablet
• La Stampa
• Image: Ragusa News

In a new book, The Global War on Christians, he says 100,000 Christians were killed each year throughout the first decade of the 21st century — 11 new martyrs every hour.

"I don't think it takes any religious convictions or confessional interests at all to see that defence of persecuted Christians deserves to be the world's number one human rights priority," he says.

Continue reading

"The body of Christ which is the Church, like the human body, was first young, but at the end of the world it will have an appearance of decline." — St. Augustine

As I sat with Brother Marcel Zhang, OCSO (b. 1924), in his Beijing apartment, I thumbed through his private photographs of Yangjiaping Trappist Abbey. Some were taken before its destruction in 1947, and some he had taken during a recent visit to the ruins. What was once a majestic abbey church filled with divine prayer and worship had been reduced to debris and an occasional partial outline of a gothic window. When the People's Liberation Army (PLA) attacked the monastery in 1947 and began its cruel torments against the monks, Zhang was one of the monks. He shared with me some of his recollections, no doubt at great risk. As we looked at a picture of the Abbey church as it appears today, where the monks gathered for daily Mass prior to 1947, Zhang paused to contemplate the ruins. "It's already gone . . . already, the church is like this," he said, insinuating that the ruins of the Abbey "church" metaphorically represented the "Church" in China, still haunted by the past, still tormented in the present.1

After the People's Court had demanded the collective execution of the monks of Our Lady of Consolation Abbey at Yangjiaping, the Trappists were bound in heavy chains or thin wire, which cut deeply into their wrists, and were confined to await their punishments. Brother Zhang recalled that during the many trials, Party officials presiding over the interrogations accused the Trappists of being, "wealthy landlords, rich peasants who exploit poor peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad eggs, and rightists". Essentially, they were charged with all of the "crimes" commonly ascribed to the worst classes in the Communist list of "bad elements."2 Normally, only one of these accusations was sufficient to warrant an immediate public execution, but some of the accused from the abbey were foreigners, and news that Nationalist forces were on their way to save the monks alarmed the Communist officers. Punishments had to be inflicted on the road, on what became the Via Crucis of the Trappist sons of Saint Benedict. More interrogations were staged during stops, and Brother Zhang noted that new trials, or "struggle sessions" (鬥爭) as he called them, were orchestrated at every village. Zhang himself was questioned more than twenty times at impromptu People's Courts. He remembered that he was treated with much more leniency than the priests, as he was still only a young seminarian in 1947. The priests were much more despised. "After the interrogations," Zhang recalled, "we would go out to relieve ourselves, and I saw the buttocks of the priests, which were red [from their beatings]; the flesh hung off like meat."3 Chinese Catholics who know about the Yangjiaping incident refer to these torments as a "siwang xingjun," 死亡行軍 or a "death march," and this is when most of the Trappists who died received their "palms of martyrdom." Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Historvius

Many of the martyrs' skulls adorn the walls of the sanctuary in the cathedral at Otranto, a small port town at the eastern tip of southern Italy, where the massacre took place in 1480.

The announcement of the May 12 canonisation was made by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI on February 11, but the news was overshadowed by the announcement of his resignation on the same day.

When the residents of Otranto refused to surrender to the Muslim army after a weeklong siege of their town, the soldiers were ordered to kill all males over the age of 15.

Many were given the option of converting to Islam instead, but Blessed Antonio Primaldo, a tailor, spoke on the prisoners' behalf.

"We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, and for Jesus Christ we are ready to die," he said, according to Blessed John Paul II, who visited Otranto in 1980 for the 500th anniversary of the martyrs' deaths.

Primaldo inspired all the other townspeople to take courage, the late Pope said, and to say: "We will all die for Jesus Christ; we willingly die so as to not renounce his holy faith."

These men were not "deluded" or "outdated," Blessed John Paul continued, but "authentic, strong, decisive, consistent men" who loved their city, their families and their faith.

In 1771, the Church recognised the validity of the local veneration of Primaldo and his companions and allowed them to be called Blessed.

In 2007, Pope Benedict formally recognised their martyrdom and in 2012 he recognised a miracle attributed to their intercession. Although martyrs do not need a miracle in order to be beatified, a miracle must be recognised before they can be pronounced saints.

Catholic Herald

Cathcon

Image: Patheos

She spoke with Philippa Hitchen about the work of the brothers and the memory of their martyrdom contained in the Basilica of St Bartholomew on Rome's Tiber Island.

Listen:

The book launch took place in the Basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola in Rome. The Basilica was dedicated in 2000 by Pope John Paul II to the new martyrs of the 20^th and 21^stcenturies. The moving memorial, managed by the Sant'Egidio Community, is significant because it is ecumenical.

The martyrs are not all Catholic. "Racconti di Pace in Oceania" ("Tales of Peace in Oceania") is about seven men who came from the global Anglican communion.

These were the Seven Martyrs of the Melanesian Brotherhood, a community of religious men who serve Melanesians of all ethnicities, tribes and backgrounds in the Solomon Islands.

They had success when others - the international community, local authorities, even local churches - despaired or looked the other way. And the shock of their sacrifice forced the train of events that pulled the Solomon Islands back from the abyss.

Source

• Vatican Radio
• UK Embassy in the Holy See
• Image: Vatican Radio

"These beloved Catholics who we mourn today were killed inside the church while worshipping God, even though their death is painful. We must rejoice with them because they have died as Martyrs who will receive merciful judgment of God," he said. Full Story