A numberless multitude

Pope John Paul II pointed out that persecution is not a characteristic only of the Church’s beginnings, as many people think, but marks every epoch of history.
In the 20th century, and maybe even more than in the first period of Christianity, there has been a vast number of men and women who bore witness to the faith through sufferings that were often heroic, the Pontiff told the large crowd.
How many Christians in the course of the 20th century, on every continent, showed their love of Christ by the shedding of blood! They underwent forms of persecution both old and new, they experienced hatred and exclusion, violence and murder. Many countries of ancient Christian tradition once more became lands where fidelity to the Gospel demanded a very high price.
In 1998 I had the opportunity to travel to five countries with some of the worst reputations of persecuting Christians. They were Burma, China, Egypt, Sudan and Pakistan. Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia and North Korea, have even worse reputations, with credible reports of government executions of believers. But because it is next to impossible for a journalist to enter these countries and move about, asking necessary questions to discover the truth, I did not go.

A voice to the voiceless

I wrote for The Oregonian, a daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, in the Northwest corner of the United States. The series won several awards, including an Overseas Press Club Award for best reporting of a human-rights issue that year. In this Jubilee Year, I have also written a more personal account of my discoveries in every issue of the The Messenger of Saint Anthony. I thank The Oregonian for its initial investment and belief in me to tell this story, and for Fr. Mario Conte and Messenger of Saint Anthony to share it with an international audience.

While modern-day martyrs are indeed countless, my hope and prayer was to give a voice to the voiceless and put a face on the faceless. With the help of photographer Ben Brink, whose photos have accompanied my articles, I believe we have done that, in some small measure personalising the tragedy and injustice of religious persecution. The people I met moved me.
I shall never forget the anguish in the voice of the grieving wife of the Rev. Noor Alam, who was stabbed to death in his own home after daring to build a Christian Church in a Pakistan neighbourhood. I can still hear the matter-of-fact recounting, accompanied by an inexplicably joyful smile, of how Egyptian Mustapha elSharkawy was imprisoned, blindfolded, beaten and shocked with an electric probe for the audacity of telling others the profound peace he had discovered after converting from Islam to Christianity.
And who could ever forget Zhang Rongliang, the pleasant peasant with the constantly-ringing cell-phone attached to his khaki shorts? He needs the phone to keep in touch with his several-million strong, far-flung network of underground house Church believers in China. Never sleeping in the same bed for more than a few nights in an attempt to stay a step ahead of the authorities, Zhang was unfortunately caught and thrown in prison for the third time a few weeks after I interviewed him. No wonder he told me, Prison is our seminary.

Lip service

For those of us who can gather, worship, read the Scriptures and partake of Holy Communion without fear of negative consequences, such persecution seems so far away, suffered by men and women of extraordinary courage. But with today’s global economy and international travel, they are not so far away, and they don’t consider themselves particularly courageous — just faithful to what our Lord calls them to.
They feel surprisingly connected to you and to me, their brothers and sisters in Christ. This despite the fact that we have often forgotten them in our prayers while most of the countries we live in have offered nothing more than lip service to defend their religious rights — rights spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, unanimously approved by the United Nations more than 50 years ago.
It wasn’t too difficult to find the persecuted, most of them quite ordinary in appearance and stature. All it usually took was a few phone calls to experts on persecution outside their countries and a meeting with a contact or two once inside the countries. No journalist had previously taken the time or effort to meet with them before.
Apparently, millions of people suffering repeated violations of their most basic human rights, because of what they believe, is not considered newsworthy these days. I wonder if the Christians thrown to the lions got any press.

Time to know

Modern victims of persecution were delighted, someone wanted to tell their story. Many took considerable risks to meet with me, putting themselves in far more danger than I was. If discovered by police, I might be thrown in jail for a night and sent back home for not having the proper journalistic credentials, credentials that would have assured I was escorted around the country by the persecutors themselves.
Those I interviewed might have been thrown into prison for much longer, where they might have been beaten and tortured for meeting and speaking to a western reporter.
Interestingly, few asked that their real names be withheld for their protection. Most agreed to be photographed. The reaction from Zhang and other house Church leaders in China was typical: It’s time the rest of the world, and especially our brothers and sisters in Christ, know of our suffering.
When the subjects of my interviews learned I was a fellow Christian, something I usually didn’t disclose unless asked, their warmth for me dramatically increased, as if I were truly a longlost relative, someone closer to them because of a mutual relationship than many of their own countrymen.

Diplomatic responses

What can be done for our suffering brothers and sisters in Christ? I am often asked that. I wish the answers were simpler than they are.
Let’s begin with diplomatic responses. Generally, the more desperate Christians perceived their suffering, the more they wanted other countries to intervene. The less their suffering, the more they wanted to try to work out their problems by themselves.
In Egypt, for example, where persecution and discrimination is real, but not nearly as pervasive as some of the other countries I visited, Christians pleaded with me to tell the United States to back off (as if I had that type of clout). If the United States, which gives Egypt more than $2 billion annually in aid, were to decrease its aid on behalf of persecuted Christians, Egyptian Christians would pay the price. If the price of bread increased on the street, they would be blamed. Even worse, Islamic extremists could rally the people to move against the moderate and increasingly tolerant government, with both the radicals and the government scapegoating the Egyptian Christians for the economic mess.
In China, Protestants and so-called Catholics who submit to the government’s extensive rules and regulations — including a strict law to not proclaim allegiance to anything or anyone outside the country — tended to want a hands-off policy. China would continue to slowly improve its treatment of Christians, they said, if the rest of the world were patient.
Underground Church leaders defiant of the government’s rules to register and submit to Communist ideology, were far less passive. Since China is eager to become an increasingly powerful world economic player, these Christians wanted western trade partners to use the leverage they have now to demand more religious freedom.
The Rev. Alexander John Malik, the Bishop of Lahore for the Church of Pakistan, says the Christian minority in his country needs pressure from the West to make the government drop a blasphemy law unjustly used to target any Christian it dislikes. Malik said Pakistani believers are prepared to suffer even a severe short-term backlash in exchange for a long-term improvement.
We always suffer. We don’t mind more, said Malik.
In Sudan, black, Christian Dinkas told me they felt betrayed and forgotten, not only by western governments, but Christians around the world. Why is it, they asked, that the Islamic world supports the corrupt government of Northern Sudan, but nations and Christians seem so reluctant to come to their aid in the fighting south?
What’s even more confusing, they told me, is that these same western Christians were key to rebels overturning the evil forces of apartheid in South Africa.

A partial answer

I may have received a partial answer recently when I opened my mail to find a newsletter written by Bona Mawal, a native of southern Sudan who has taught African history at Oxford University in England and other fine universities. Mawal wrote, It was almost impossible to make any sense out of the confused political situation in Sudan last month.

If Mawal, a distinguished scholar and native, cannot make sense of what’s happening in Sudan, how can the rest of the world determine who the good guys and bad guys are? Nonetheless, Christians in the south, long the victims of slavery and other travesties, are desperate for help.
There is no amount of persecution that can be worse than what the people are suffering, Mawal told me as we travelled together in his homeland two years ago. Any step that can be taken will help.
All this to say that one of the most effective things you can do to help fellow Christians suffering in other countries is to be informed. Hopefully, this series of articles has enlightened you a bit.
Through the World Wide Web, the Internet, information can be at your fingertips, literally. If learning about the entire world is too overwhelming, concentrate on a single country.
Here are a few recommended Web sites to get started. Try my original series in The Oregonian at www.oregonlive.com/special/series/christians.ssf and click on bookmarks to lead you to anti-persecution organisations with their own web sites. They include Voice of the Martyrs (www.persecution.net), Compass Direct (www.compassdirect.org) and the World Evangelical Fellowship’s religious freedom report at (www.worldevangelical.org/rlcintro.htm).
To get a Roman Catholic perspective on the persecution of Christians in China, go Cardinal Kung’s website at www.cardinalkungfoundation.org. There are many more sites to keep you informed, but this should get you started.
The second thing you can do is to take action, by joining or contributing to some of these groups to fight persecution in various countries. A surprisingly effective tactic is to write letters of protest on behalf of specific prisoners. Letters of encouragement to people who have been victims of persecution can mean more than you could imagine. Many of the anti-persecution groups can provide names and addresses.
Some may want to contact their political leaders to take action, through legislation or diplomatic pressure, against persecuting countries and on behalf of victims.

A one-word answer

But there’s one thing victims of persecution ask of you more than anything else. That’s to intercede for them to the Father we share in common.
Chinese house Church leader Allen Yuan, who spent 21 years in prison because of his Christian religious beliefs, said it best: The answer is in this one word — pray. _