Modern-day Martyrs

IN THE LITURGICAL YEAR, March is the time when we Catholics celebrate Lent, the forty-day period of fasting, abstinence and prayer to prepare ourselves for Easter. In particular, on March 24 we celebrate the Day of Prayer and Fasting in memory of the missionaries killed for the cause of the Gospel. This initiative was started in Italy by the Youth Movement of the Pontifical Mission Societies in 1993, and in recent years has spread to other countries and continents.
This month I would therefore like to remember on this page the many forgotten missionaries who, in real imitation of Our Lord, gave their very lives in the service of their brothers and sisters in the course of last year.
In 2005, 26 missionaries were killed; they were priests, nuns, lay-people, and even a bishop, who had dedicated their whole lives to preaching the Gospel and to serving the poor. Some of them were found hours or even days after their deaths. Apparently, they were the victims of aggressions or robberies  which took place in situations of exceptional brutality, violence, destitution and poverty - situations which these missionaries were trying to ameliorate through their presence and works.
Surprisingly, 12 of these martyrs (that is, almost half the total), lost their lives in Latin America, a predominantly Catholic region. Colombia detains the notorious record of 5 missionaries killed. This is the country where the Church is paying the highest price for its work of reconciliation and social justice in the name of the Gospel.
Father Sanchez was only 32 years old. He was killed in front of his own students as a 'reward' for his efforts at keeping them away from terrorism. To bear witness to the values of peace is one of the great tasks placed before all Christians in their labours to rid the world of violence and war.
A further two priests were killed in Mexico: they were working in deprived areas blighted by violence and illegal trades. The fate of Sister Dorothy Stang moved the world. This 73-year-old American nun was killed in February 2005 because of her open support of poor farmers in their dispute against the powerful landed gentry.
Africa had eight martyrs. Life in this continent, plagued as it is by incredible poverty, wars and diseases, has always been full of hardships. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, a 72-year-old Belgian Jesuit, Fr. René de Haes, had chosen Congo as the field of his missionary activity in 1959. He had therefore participated in all the painful events experienced by that country in the last 45 years. He was assassinated by a band of muggers in Kimwenza, north of Kinshasa, last May.
In August, Fr. Francois Djikulo, of the Diocese of Manono, in Congo, was on a peace mission to try to convince the feared rebel leader Kyungu Kyungu, alias Gedeon, to stop terrorising the people. For months nothing was heard of his whereabouts until November, when it was known that Fr. Djikulo and his lay companion, Simon Kayimbi, had been savagely mutilated and then burned alive.
A 77-year-old Italian-born bishop, Luigi Locati, was killed in Kenya after 40 years of service for that country.
The life and struggles of the Church in Africa constitute an enormous reservoir of faith and hope for a continent which is still groping in the dark, but religious are dying in the Old Continent too. In Russia, Jan Hermanovsky, a Slovak priest, was killed in the outskirts of Moscow, where he was reviving a parish community, and in Belgium Father Robert De Leener, well-known for his hospitality to immigrants, was actually killed by one of them right in front of his elderly mother.
The soil of Asia has also been bathed by the blood of the martyrs, with three priests killed in India and one in Indonesia. Ignatius Bara, an Indian priest, was stabbed to death while trying to avert a clash between a tribal Christian group and a fundamentalist Hindu sect in an area where ethnic tensions run high.
The martyrdom of these 26 missionaries is proof that their faith and love were so strong as to be able to overcome even the 'greatest evil': death. This fact must surely be a fitting subject on which to dwell and meditate on during this Lenten period: being a Christian is serious business.
Pope Benedict XVI has made the following statement: 'How can we not say that everywhere, even where there is no persecution, to live the Gospel with coherence bears a high cost with it?' Yes indeed, to live the Gospel implies paying the high, but sweet, price of loving your neighbour as yourself, regardless of their faith, national origin or skin colour.