Pope Francis Honors Priest, Pastor and Muslim's Wife During Mass for New Martyrs
Pope Francis presided over the Liturgy of the Word in St. Bartholomew's Basilica on Rome's Tiber Island, in memory of the new martyrs of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Saturday afternoon prayer service was organized by Sant'Egidio Community, a church dedicated to the new martyrs since 2000 when St. John Paul II gave it that purpose.
One of the honored new martyrs killed "in odium amoris" or "hatred of love" was Jacques Hamel, an elderly French priest who was brutally murdered on July 26, 2016.The 85-year-old priest was celebrating Mass in the town of Rouen when two members of the Islamic State (ISIS) slit his throat.
Another martyr who was given tribute was Reformed Church pastor Paul Schneider who was killed in the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp in July 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He was killed because he wanted to ensure "the German people kept a Christian orientation in the state and society," his son Karl said.
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In his homily, Pope Francis said the Church today needs martyrs.
"Martyrs, witnesses, this means, everyday saints, those who lead ordinary lives, carried forward with consistency; but also those who have the courage to accept the grace of being witnesses to the end, to their death," he said.
He related the experience of a Muslim man he met last year during his visit to a migrant detention facility on the Greek island of Lesbos. The man's Christian wife was killed by having her throat slashed by terrorists when she refused to throw away the cross that she wore.
"And this man didn't have resentment. The Muslim, who had this cross of pain, carried forth with no resentment, found refuge in the love of his wife, who received the grace of martyrdom," the pope said. "I don't know if he's still in Lesbos, or if he was able to run away from this concentration camp, because the refugee camps, many times, are concentration [camps], for the amount of people left there."
