“Vatican commission will catalogue non-Catholic Christian martyrs”

I love it! Very worth hitting the link for the whole article and not just the excerpts below the link. Only takes five minutes.

Just weeks after Pope Francis included Coptic martyrs in the Catholic Roman martyrology, he has established a working commission in the Dicastery for Saints’ Causes to catalogue all Christian martyrs, including non-Catholic Christians.

Twenty-one Christian martyrs, including 20 Copts killed by Daech in 2015 in Libya, were included in the Roman martyrology, Pope Francis announced on May 11, 2023, in front of Patriarch Tawadros II, Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, who was present in Rome. This is historic: The Catholic Church and the Coptic Church have saints of the first centuries in common, but these will be the first saints recognized by both Churches since the split of the fifth century.

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Saint John Paul II had already stated in his Letter Tertio millennio adveniente that everything must be done to ensure that the legacy of the “unknown soldiers of God’s great cause” is not lost.

On May 7, 2000, these very martyrs were remembered during an ecumenical celebration, which saw gathered at the Colosseum, together with the Bishop of Rome, representatives of Churches and ecclesial communities from all over the world.

Pope Francis has repeatedly called this shared testimony to Christ an “ecumenism of blood.”

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“In a world where at times it seems that evil prevails,” the Pope concluded, “I am certain that the elaboration of this Catalogue, also in the context of the approaching Jubilee, will help believers to read the reasons for life and good.”