The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History.

Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History, New York, Crossroad Pub. Co., 2000, 430 pages, $39.95 (US)

This book is an attempt to account for the "170 million people who died violently during this century, without even counting soldiers who died in wars." They died for religious, political, and ethnic motives, whether singly or combined. Many of them were unbelievably heroic. Sometimes they died alone, sometimes in groups, sometimes in very large groups. Often they were tortured, sometimes with incredible horror. In Albania, Father "Shantoja was so badly tortured before he died, his forearms and leg bones broken, that he could only 'walk' around on elbows and knees. His own mother asked his captors to kill him rather than continue the torture."

The author is convinced that we have a duty not to forget these millions of human beings, that every one of them deserves to have his story told. Unfortunately little or nothing is known at present, or perhaps will ever be known, about most of them. However, the author has reported, at least briefly, on the lives and deaths of a great many of them. Of course this has been done more easily for Catholics who have been declared venerable or beatified or canonized, or whose cause for this has begun. And for some of the better known of these he has given a longer account, such as Blessed Miguel Pro of Mexico (1891-1927), the Venerable Charles de Foucauld of Algeria (1858-1916), Franz Jagerstatter of Austria (1907-43), St. Edith Stein of Germany (1891-1942), St. Maximilian Kolbe of Poland (1894-1941), and Oscar Romero of San Salvador (1917-80).

It is possible here only to mention some of the facts or opinions written by the author. In Mexico, where the government killed 250,000 to 300,000 people in the 1920s, "conditions had become so bad for everyone that instead of saying adios people would make an act of contrition." In Central America, too, in Guatemala, Cuba, and San Salvador, there has been strong religious persecution.

Europe

Before and during the Second World War, 1939-46, in Germany and the Soviet Union, millions and millions were put to death. In Russia under Lenin and Stalin, in the first seven years of Communist rule, 1917-25, "according to good estimates, 200,000 Catholics disappeared and are unaccounted for." In Ukraine, "the Ukrainian Catholic Church under the Soviets was the largest suppressed group of believers in the world" "We can say with certainty ... that 344 clergy, meaning primarily bishops, diocesan priests, and members of religious orders, were officially recorded as having been 'repressed.' Another half million lay people in Ukraine were imprisoned or sent into internal exile, some, no doubt, for religious reasons."

In Poland, which suffered first under the Nazis and then under the Soviets, "when the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, went to Warsaw in 1979, the crowds in Victory Square chanted: We want God, we want God, we want God in the family circle, we want God in books, in schools, we want God in government orders, we want God, we want God."

In Lithuania, "the exemplary behaviour of so many Lithuanian believers in such terrifying circumstances is one of the many reasons for hope in the human future of a bloody century." Whoever reads the account of one Lithuanian woman alone, Nijole Sadunaite (pages 243-45, 251-52), will not soon forget it.

There was fierce persecution also in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. In Albania, "out of 156 priests before the persecution began, 65 were martyred and 64 died during or after imprisonment. Tens of thousands of common people died for religious or other reasons." Romania endured "fifty years of one of the worst persecutions of the century."

Asia and Africa

There has been, and is, persecution in India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Viet Nam. And, in China, during the first years of the Boxer Rebellion, which began in 1899, tens of thousands were murdered, including 25,000 Catholics. And later regimes have been responsible for innumerable victims. The book gives an account of the sufferings there of Cardinal Kung, who has just died, and his sister (pages 332-37). "Though some signs are promising, the odds are that, for the foreseeable future, China will continue to be the preeminent land of Christian martyrs in the world."

North Korea has been totally opposed to any religion for decades. During the Korean War (1950-53), "fifty percent of the hierarchy, one-third of the clergy, and at least 15,000 of the laity perished." In Africa, millions died in Burundi and Rwanda, and many in Algeria and Angola. And the Sudan is still carrying on the "most vicious persecution today, with fundamentalist Moslems in the north murdering, and leading into slavery, many Christians and others in the south of the country.

The lesson

The author contends that "there is no other group of victims throughout history who so consistently faced terrifying ends with calm hope and sincerely forgave their persecutors." Jesus said: "They have persecuted me and they will persecute you." And "the twentieth century, alongside its great advances, was perhaps the bloodiest on record." "Happy is the age that does not produce a large crop of martyrs. But even happier is the age whose people are willing to remain with Christ whether it means martyrdom or not, for from that willingness to die springs everything that makes it worthwhile to live."