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What martyrdom means
Jesuits who died for love of God and humanity
More than 300 Jesuits died during the twentieth century for love of God and their fellow human beings. Some of them were murdered, others died as a result of maltreatment, others were simply made to "disappear" by terrorist regimes who regularly hide their victims. All of them form part of our martyrology for the twentieth century.
"Martyr" is from the Greek: it means "witness." For that reason, the first martyr of our faith is Jesus Christ himself, the Incarnate Son of God. He gave perfect witness with His life of the infinite love of God for human beings, and of the greatest love a human being can have for God. His death and resurrection express with sublime eloquence the depth of His commitment and the unconquerable power of His death.
In different times and circumstances, martyrs make one thing real: They point out the horror and the scandal of sin, which impels some people to go on killing other people who are innocent and just. But martyrs are witnesses to a Love which transcends such sin, conquers and overcomes it.
Countless martyrs have lived in the course of centuries. From the beginning, they won great esteem and veneration in the Church. The great third-century theologian Origen said: "Whoever gives witness in word or deed to the truth, taking truth's part in some way, ought to be called with total right 'martyr.' But in our brotherhood, impressed as we are by the great-heartedness of those who fought for truth and virtue all the way to death, we have gotten used to calling 'martyr' in the truest sense, only those who have testified to the mystery of religion by shedding their blood."
Reasons for martyrdom have differed according to circumstances of history. The first martyrs were victims of the Jews and then of the Roman Empire. Later on, martyrdom was the result of the missionary activity of the Church, of terrible religious wars and of the anti-religious persecution of our modern world.
When the Church established processes for canonization, it specified the conditions for declaring someone a martyr of the faith: 1) Someone must have been murdered or died as a result of maltreatment; 2) The persecutor had to have been motivated by hatred of the faith or of the practice of some virtues essential to it; 3) The Martyrs had to have acted with the awareness that their conduct might cost their lives.
The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) declared that the excellence of martyrdom was rooted in the degree of identification with Jesus Christ which motivated a person to give his life for others. For this reason martyrdom is esteemed by the Church as a unique gift and the supreme proof of love (Lumen Gentium, 42).
Pope John Paul II has beatified and canonized more martyrs than any other pope. He even amplified the very concept of martyrdom, extending it to people who performed a heroic charitable act. When he canonized as a martyr Maximilian Kolbe, who had been beatified for his practice of virtue, he said that this change was justified because Kolbe's act of offering his life in exchange for the life of a father of a family in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, made him like Christ in a very special way (St. Peter's Square, October 10, 1982). As the end of this millennium approaches the same pope has commissioned a Martyrology for the twentieth century, so that we will never forget the witness of love of God and neighbor which so many men and women of our time have given with their lives and with their deaths.
The first Jesuits put to death in the 20th century were the Frenchmen Modestus Andlauer, Remigius Isoré, Paulus Denn, and Leo Ignatius Mangin. They died in China between 1900 and 1901 in the so-called "Boxer Revolution." All of them were beatified in 1955.
In the year 1915-1916, two Armenians died during an attack on members of their race mounted by the regime of young Turks.
Religious persecution claimed its most celebrated Jesuit victim in the Mexican Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, executed by a firing squad in 1927. In the following decades, between 1932 and 1946, we are certain that between eleven and fifteen Jesuits were killed by the Chinese communist regime. In Spain, persecution took on tragic dimensions: 122 Jesuits died. Fifty-two of them are in process of beatification. When one remembers that the Society of Jesus was expelled from Spanish territory in 1932, one understands why there were not many more victims.
The Nazi regime murdered 82 Jesuits: Poles (79), Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Slavs, Slovenians, Frenchmen and Dutchmen. Many of them died in Dachau or Auschwitz. The Nazis' Japanese allies killed another 23: three Canadians in China, three Dutchmen in Indonesia, seven Spaniards in Micronesia.
After the Second World War, the communist regimes of China, the Soviet Union, and its allies behind the Iron Curtain killed many priests and religious without leaving any trace. We can be certain that 44 Jesuits were killed, some in terribly cruel ways: thirteen in China, ten in Poland, five in Albania, seven in Yugoslavia.
From the middle of the 1970s, violent governments based on anti-communist ideologies multiplied in the world, and especially in Latin America. Some allied themselves with drug trafficking and corruption to maintain their power. Often they interpreted Catholic protests in favor of justice as Marxist infiltration in the Church and used that pretext to kill many religious and laypersons. One Jesuit was murdered in the Philippines and thirteen in Latin America, seven of them in El Salvador.
The last years of this century have been marked by racial and nationalist violence. In Africa, 17 Jesuits have perished because of this: seven of them in Zimbabwe and three of them in Ruanda. Another 11 have died in Asia, among them four in Lebanon and five in India. On the following pages we give the complete list of our Jesuit martyrology of the twentieth century.