Rome (Fides) – “The ecumenism of the martyrs and the witnesses to the faith is the most convincing of all; to the Christians of the twenty-first century it shows the path to unity. It is the heritage of the Cross lived in the light of Easter: a heritage which enriches and sustains Christians as they go forward into the new millennium. If we glory in this heritage it is not because of any partisan spirit and still less because of any desire for vengeance upon the persecutors, but in order to make manifest the extraordinary power of God, who has not ceased to act in every time and place. We do this as we ourselves offer pardon, faithful to the example of the countless witnesses killed even as they prayed for their persecutors.” This was how Pope John Paul II explained the meaning of the Ecumenical Commemoration of the Witnesses to the Faith of the 20th Century” held in Rome at the Colosseum in the afternoon of Sunday May 7, the 3rd Sunday of Easter.

“Countless numbers refused to yield to the cult of the false gods of the twentieth century – the Pope said - and were sacrificed by Communism, Nazism, by the idolatry of State or race. Many others fell in the course of ethnic or tribal wars, because they had rejected a way of thinking foreign to the Gospel of Christ. Some went to their death because, like the Good Shepherd, they decided to remain with their people, despite intimidation. On every continent and throughout the entire twentieth century, there have been those who preferred to die rather than betray the mission which was theirs.”

Earlier, during the midday Regina Caeli prayer, the Pope invited the people to come to this “important event of the Great Jubilee”: “To commemorate the heroic witnesses of the faith in the 20th century – he said – means to prepare the future, guaranteeing solid foundations for hope. The new generations must know the price of the faith they inherit, so they may take up with gratitude the torch of the Gospel and illuminate with it the new century and the new millennium. It is also important to underline that the celebration will have an ecumenical character: testimony of a number of Christians of different confessions and ecclesial communities will be heard. The courage they demonstrated in taking on themselves the Cross of Christ ,peals with a louder voice than factors of division.”

The Commemoration opened with a “statio” inside the Colosseum, which, like other places in the city, calls to mind the witness of faith given by the early martyrs of the Church of Rome. Then the Pope and representatives of many Churches, Ecclesial Communions and organizations, went to the platform for the service. The Gospel Book was enthroned and incensed and the Liturgy of the Word began. After the Holy Father’s homily there was an exchanging of a sign of peace among all present and then came the commemoration of the witnesses of the faith. As each category was remembered a lamp was lit at the foot of a large Orthodox icon of the Crucified Christ.

Here are the eight groups commemorated: Christians who bore witness to their faith under Soviet totalitarianism (Russian Patriarch Tichon and a Russian teacher and painter Ol’ga Jafa); Witnesses to the faith who were victims of Communism in other nations of Europe (Jon Sucio, Romanian Greek Catholic Bishop, Fr Anton Luli, Albanian Jesuit); Confessors of the faith who were victims of Nazism and Fascism (Lutheran pastor Paul Schneider and Polish Bishop Ignacy Jez); Followers of Christ who gave their lives for the proclamation of the Gospel in Asia and Oceania (Chinese Catholic Margaret Chou - niece of the late Cardinal Gong Pin-mei bishop of Shanghai - an Anglican Bishop with a group of his co-workers who died in a Japanese concentration camp); Christian faithful persecuted out of hatred for the Catholic faith ( witnesses from Spain and Mexico); Witnesses of evangelization in Africa and Madagascar (44 Hutu and Tutsi seminarians in Burundi, and Canadian Baptist missionary W. G. R. Jotcham); Christians who gave their lives for love of Christ and their brothers and sisters in America (Capuchin Bishop Alejandro Labaka and Bishop Jaramillo Monsalve of the Yarumal Foreign Mission Institute, with a mention of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador); Witnesses to the faith in different parts of the world (Trappist monks of Notre Dame de l’Atlas kidnapped and murdered in Algeria and Armenian Patriarch Karekin I). Each of the testimonies was followed by prayers and hymns by different choirs: Lutheran, Eastern Europe, African, Philippines and Armenian.

After the singing of the Our Father and before giving his final blessing the Pope thanked all the representatives of the different Churches and Ecclesial Communities for coming and he urged everyone to keep the memory of these witnesses alive and to imitate their example. (12/5/2000)