VATICAN - “Witnesses and martyrs inspire us to pray, encourage us in the apostolate, confirm us in the faith: the story of heroic witnesses of faith and martyrdom in the Eastern Catholic Churches in the 20th century

Thursday, 25 March 2004

Vatican City (Fides Service) - “Knowledge of history is fundamental for identity. Some Eastern Catholic Churches were so harshly persecuted that they lost personnel, property, memory and the faithful had to go to the only churches which were open, Orthodox churches and sometimes Latin rite Catholic churches. After so much suffering, remembering history helps discover roots. The volume is not silent about those responsible for so much suffering. But there is no resentment. Despite difficult relations in the past, in many cases during the "century of the martyrs" Eastern Catholics and Christians of other confessions suffered together in prisons, gulags, labour camps.” Cardinal Ignace Moussa I Daoud, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Oriental Churches said this on March 23, at the Vatican Press Room when he presented a volume published by his Congregation titled: "Fede e martirio. Le Chiese orientali cattoliche nell’Europa del Novecento" [Faith and Martyrdom. The Eastern Catholic Churches in 20th century Europe] (Acts of a Conference on Contemporary Church History - Vatican City, 22-24 October 1998) published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
However Cardinal Daoud insisted: “There is no resentment - I say once again - also because the memory of martyrs is always purifying. A martyr is like the meek and merciful person of the Beatitudes, who forgives, who does not seek martyrdom, who does not think of those who could kill him, but simply chooses to give his life, to live with mercy. He offers his life, he does not try to save it at any cost.”
Professor Andrea Riccardi, decent in Church History, said the book is “a remarkable work which was part of a series of studies born of the great intuition of John Paul II who said and wrote many times that in the 20th Century the Church was once a .” Referring in particular to the martyrdom of Eastern Catholics, Prof. Riccardi said that it was due “also to their particular situation, their belonging to two worlds: the world of eastern traditions and the world of the Catholic Church. Very often Eastern Catholics are passeurs between two worlds with all the difficulties and misunderstandings of bridges... this is why the martyrdom of Eastern Catholics, who are like people on the frontier between two worlds, is often harder than that of Latins or Orthodox.” Eastern Catholics were a species which Communist politics refused to recognise in any part of the Eastern empire(from Czechoslovakia to Rumania), except for a few exceptions as was the case for the small and suffering Bulgarian and Hungarian communities.
Riccardi said that the pages of the book “illustrate the Soviet plan to eliminate Eastern Catholicism” and he stressed the great problem of religious freedom. “To deny the existence of Eastern Catholic communities is to deny religious freedom and freedom in pluralism. It was pluralism which the communist regimes could not accept.” In Eastern Europe for Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants martyrdom was not only a question of the hierarchy, priests, and religious men and women , “there was a martyrdom of the people”. At the conclusion of his intervention Prof. Riccardi returned to the Christian significance of martyrdom: “a Christian martyr, as Christians understand it, has a specific function: it does not call for revenge, it does not make demands. In our language today the word martyr is misused. We speak of martyrdom in the secular sense. We speak martyrdom for Muslim suicide bombers. But a sahid, a suicide “martyr” is quite different from a Christian martyr. A Christian martyr does not kill himself to kill others. A Christian martyrs gives his life to save the lives of others, to be loyal to his faith, to sustain other believers, he gives it out of love. He does not seek death, but he will not renounce his faith or his human behaviour even at the cost of his life. This is the story told in these pages.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 25/3/2004 - Righe 42; Parole 625)


Share: