Martyrs Archives

Pope canonizes 35 new saints, including a ‘feminist’ priest
- Vatican
- October 16, 2017
Pope Francis on Sunday canonized 35 new Catholic saints, including a late 19th and early 20th century Spanish priest today regarded by many as a feminist, because he fought for equal educational opportunities for women and girls. Among the others, 33 were martyrs in either Brazil or Mexico, meaning people who paid the ultimate price for their faith.
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Catholic group continues Blessed Stanley Rother’s work in Guatemala
- Catholic News Agency, Church in the US
- September 26, 2017
Blessed Stanley Rother was also known for not wanting to abandon his people, even though he knew his life was at risk. After Rother died, his friend Father John Goggin said he still did not want the people to feel abandoned. That’s why he was grateful when the opportunity came to work with Unbound, a non-profit founded by lay Catholics who had also spent time serving as missionaries in Latin America.
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Remember the witness of your martyrs, Pope Francis tells Japanese bishops
- Catholic News Agency, Vatican
- September 18, 2017
Pope Francis reminded the Church in Japan that the “long line of martyrs and confessors of the faith, by nationality, language, social class and age, had in common a deep love for the Son of God, renouncing their own civil status or other aspects of their own social condition, all in order to gain Christ.”
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‘Father Stan’s Our Man’: Okla. farm town honors hometown hero on path to sainthood

A crowd of nearly 400 gathered in a small church in Oklahoma to pay tribute to a hometown hero who could become a saint. The Reverend Stanley Francis Rother was killed in Guatemala by three masked assassins in 1981 because he had sided with local Indians against the government.

Who are the martyrs Pope Francis will beatify in Colombia?

Given the nature of their deaths, the two clergy killed amid a civil war Pope Francis is set to beatify in Colombia, one a bishop and the other a priest, can be seen as belonging to a new wave of “modern martyrs” Francis has often referred to, killed by oppressive regimes of their time such as Nazism, Communism and brutal dictatorships.

Pope to beatify Colombian martyrs during visit

It has been confirmed now by the Vatican that Pope Francis will beatify Bishop Jesus Emilio Jaramillo Monsalve of Arauca and Father Pedro Ramirez Ramos while he is in Colombia in September. The pope has also just signed decrees recognizing the heroic virtues of some other people wending their way through the beatification process.