Rome — There are people being crucified. Families are being shackled. Unspeakable things are being done to women. Christians are living the Way of the Cross in the most dramatic of ways. True Christian martyrdom is happening in the world today.
“The whole Middle East without exception is presently engulfed by a nightmare that seems to have no end and that undermines the very existence of minorities, particularly of Christians in lands known to be the cradle of our faith and early Christian communities,” said His Beatitude Mor Ignatius Youssef III Younan, patriarch of Antioch for the Syriac Catholic Church.
Cardinal Charles Bo of Burma talked about the need to bring greater visibility to the suffering of many Christians in the Middle East today, in a particular way. “In some parts of the Middle East,” he said, “Christianity is being wiped out en masse.” The evening before, a Vatican official was clear in calling out radical Islam as the driver of what Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople called the “obliteration” of Christians.
The word “genocide” is being used frequently here in Rome, at a conference titled “Under Caesar’s Sword: Christian Response to Persecution,” co-sponsored by the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University and the Center for Civil & Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame.
“Compassion is the common religion here today,” Cardinal Bo said. “Christianity was born with the blood of the lamb. At this very moment some brother or sister is shedding blood for just one reason: He or she is a Christian.”