BALTIMORE (MD)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
[live stream of the public sessions]
Address to the USCCB General Assembly on November 11, 2013.
Just last August, I had the honor of concelebrating the Mass of Dedication for the Cathedral of the Resurrection in Kiev. A particularly moving moment came when Metropolitan Shevchuk asked the Lord’s protective hand upon believers suffering persecution for their faith anywhere in the world. That such a heartfelt plea came from a people who had themselves been oppressed for so long made it all the more poignant.
This morning I want to invite us to broaden our horizons, to “think Catholic” about our brothers and sisters in the faith now suffering simply because they sign themselves with the cross, bow their heads at the Holy Name of Jesus, and happily profess the Apostles’ Creed.
Brother bishops, our legitimate and ongoing struggles to protect our “first and most cherished freedom” in the United States pale in comparison to the Via Crucis currently being walked by so many of our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, who are experiencing lethal persecution on a scale that defies belief. If our common membership in the mystical body of Christ is to mean anything, then their suffering must be ours as well.
The new Archbishop of Canterbury has rightly referred to victims of Christian persecution as “martyrs.” We are living in what must be recognized as, in the words of Blessed John Paul II, “a new age of martyrs.” One expert calculates that half of all Christian martyrs were killed in the twentieth century alone. The twenty-first century has already seen in its first 13 years one million people killed around the world because of their belief in Jesus Christ – – one million already in this still young century
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