Pope leads service honouring hundreds of modern martyrs

By CathNews New Zealand

September 16th, 2025

Pope Leo XIV gives his homily during an ecumenical prayer service at Rome’s Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls on September 14, 2025. To the left of the Pope is Orthodox Archbishop Elia of Helsinki, representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. At the far right is Anglican Bishop Anthony Ball, the archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Holy See. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

Modern Christian martyrs showed that love is stronger than death, Pope Leo XIV said at an ecumenical prayer service on Sunday. Source: Catholic News Service.

The prayer service on September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, commemorated 1624 Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants who died for their faith between 2000 and 2025. During the Holy Year of 2000, St John Paul II had led a similar commemoration of Christians killed in the 20th century, mainly by communist and fascist regimes.

Pope Leo was joined by 28 representatives of other Christian churches and communities for the prayer service at Rome’s Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls.

The Vatican did not release the names of the 1624 new martyrs whose stories were submitted over the past two years by Catholic bishops’ conferences, religious orders and nunciatures from all over the world. But Pope Leo mentioned some of them in his homily, including Sr Dorothy Stang, a US member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who was shot and killed in the Brazilian Amazon in 2005 for defending the land rights of the Indigenous and poor farmers.

“When those who were about to kill her asked her for a weapon, she showed them her Bible and replied, ‘This is my only weapon’,” Pope Leo said.

The Pope also mentioned “Br Francis Tofi, an Anglican and member of the Melanesian Brotherhood, who gave his life for peace in the Solomon Islands”. Br Tofi and six other members of the religious order were killed by militia members on Guadalcanal in 2003.

The new martyrs and witnesses of the faith were not killed because of the denomination they belonged to, but because they were Christian, Pope Leo said, and lived the Gospel of loving service to their brothers and sisters.

“As we recognised during the recent Synod, the ecumenism of blood unites ‘Christians of different backgrounds who together give their lives for faith in Jesus Christ. The witness of their martyrdom is more eloquent than any word: unity comes from the Cross of the Lord,’” he said, quoting the Synod’s final document.

FULL STORY

Modern Christian martyrs show power of love in face of hatred, pope says (By Cindy Wooden/CNS)