A
Campaign for Modern Christian Martyrs
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firstthings.com
By
Nina Shea, 4 . 28 . 16
At 8
p.m. today, Rome’s white marble Trevi Fountain—its swirling waters and the
charging baroque statues of Oceanus, his sea shell chariot and attendant
tritons and horses—will all be turned blood red in a campaign to raise
awareness about modern day Christian martyrs.
The
popular fountain is decidedly not Christian-themed and historically seems to
have inspired only frivolity. The pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in
Need and a coalition of other Catholic Italian non-governmental organizations
that are co-sponsoring this performance art are counting on this unlikely
juxtaposition. They hope that the coin tossing, selfie-taking throngs of
tourists, as the frivolous Western public at large, will be given pause, if
only briefly, to contemplate the surging pattern of mass murder of Christians
purely for reasons of faith, largely by Islamists.
This
threat has become existential for various Christian communities in Asia and
Africa. In northern Nigeria, worshippers are slaughtered in their churches and
in their living rooms. In Kenya, Christians have been hunted out and killed for
their religion in their university dorm rooms, at shopping malls, and on public
buses. In Libya, it was the Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Christian migrants
who were singled out and beheaded. In Pakistan, Christian families were blown
up while celebrating Easter in a park. In Yemen last month, the nuns of Mother
Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity were tied up, shot to death and mutilated;
their staff was murdered and their priest, the last surviving Christian in the
port city of Aden, was kidnapped. For the past three days, at the outset of the
101st anniversary of the Armenian genocide, the Armenian Christian quarter in
Aleppo has come under jihadi siege though there are no military installations
there—only defenseless civilians.
And
then there is the religious genocide facing Christians throughout ISIS
controlled territory in Iraq and Syria, where, for the first time in two
millennia, no functioning church, cleric, or intact Christian community—whether
Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant—can be found. While all faith groups are
suffering in these conflicts, the Christian communities are being wiped out in
targeted attacks.
Another
coalition of American Christians overcame opposition from some prominent
secular human rights voices to persuade a reluctant US government to include
Christians in its ISIS genocide designation, along with the Yazidis and Shi’a.
This landmark decision resulted from a level of ecumenical engagement not seen
in foreign policy since the Sudan peace agreement over a decade ago.
This
campaign now needs to progress to the next level of sustained prayer and action
on behalf of the persecuted Church abroad. America’s churches, at the local
level, which have been largely silent, must actively engage for this to
succeed.
Pope
Francis frequently invokes the modern martyrs in his public prayers. This
coming weekend, the Holy See will hold a conference at the United Nations in
New York with Christian survivors. Among them will be Iraq’s Father Douglas
Bazi, a Catholic priest who was kidnapped, tortured, and shot before being
released for ransom and who now cares for 500 ISIS survivors, and the daughters
of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian mother on death row since 2010, for
blasphemy against Islam. Still others will speak about Syria’s many martyred
laity and clergy, including two Orthodox bishops—Boulos Yazigi and Mar
Gregorios Youhanna Ibrahim—who disappeared in April 2013, and a twelve-year-old
evangelical boy and his father who were crucified for their Christian conversion
last summer.
These
are examples of the persecuted that we should be praying for in our churches.
No doubt spurred by the massacre of the Missionaries of Charity in Yemen that
was reported that day, a priest at my own Catholic parish church in Washington,
D.C. led a prayer for the “softening of the hearts” of the terrorists, without
mentioning any of their victims. At another church, a prayer of the faithful
called for strength for Christian victims to hold up under persecution, without
any details. The success of peace talks in Syria has also been a focus of
communal prayers I’ve heard. These are all welcome, but they seem too generic,
too abstract. Where are the prayers to honor specific martyrs, and the
martyr-confessors that George Weigel recently wrote about here—prayers that put
a human face on the crisis and can inspire the congregation to deeper
contemplation about Christian faithfulness? When one part of the Body of Christ
suffers, we all suffer, Scripture tells us. But, to our local churches, Asia’s
and Africa’s suffering Christians just don’t seem to be all that relevant.
In
the Catholic liturgy, we remember “Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, etc.” The
first two of these were third century women, who, after refusing to renounce
their Christian conversions, endured being sent into an arena to be trampled by
wild bulls and then having their throats slit by the Romans, as recounted in
Bill Bennett’s well researched new book Trial by Fire. Why is it so difficult
for our congregations to remember our contemporary martyrs?
On
recent visits to Rome’s two famous Jesuit churches Gesu and Sant’Ignazio, I
searched in vain for any sign of recognition of two beloved European Jesuits.
Before being recently attacked by jihadists in Syria, they had devoted some forty
years each to serving Syria’s poor and oppressed. Editor and media personality
Father Jim Martin, S.J., told me that they were “great men of peace.” Indeed:
Fr. Frans van der Lugt, who cared for disabled children of all faiths and
refused to leave them when the war started, was dragged from his monastery in
Homs, and beaten, shot, and left to die in the street. Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio had
gone to negotiate a hostage release and a truce between Islamist rebels and
local Kurds at ISIS headquarters in Raqqa when he disappeared. I’ve never heard
these great men mentioned at Georgetown University’s Sunday Masses that I
frequently attend, either.
“Why
is the world silent while Christians are being slaughtered?” asked World Jewish
Congress president Ronald Lauder. In breaking this silence, American churches
can help the persecuted—both to stay safely and thrive in their home countries
and, if impossible, to give them refuge here. And, as Sudanese Catholic Bishop
Macram Gassis once instructed me, these Christians are not “mendicants.” Their
powerful witness can revitalize our own faith. America’s churches should turn
on red spotlights too—if only to remind themselves to pause and reflect on this
terrible era of Christian martyrdom.
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