"To beatify a martyr, miracles are not required. Martyrdom is enough ... we thus save a little time ... and paper, and money ..." Pope Francis joked, referencing the study of the causes of martyrs that normally requires a strict analysis of reported miracles. The Pope was speaking during an audience on November 14, 2024, with those who attended a conference organized by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints on martyrdom.
“In the Cross of Christ there is all of God's love, there is his immense mercy. To be a saint does not only require human effort or personal commitment to sacrifice and renunciation,” Pope Francis said. “First of all, we must allow ourselves to be transformed by the power of God's love, which is greater than us and makes us capable of loving even beyond what we thought we were capable of.”
In his speech, Pope Francis emphasized two different paths to holiness: martyrdom and offering one’s life, and highlighted how these cases often help the rapprochement between the Christian Churches, as believers of all confessions find “equality” in martyrdom, i.e. dying for their Christian faith.
In fact the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints organized its annual academic conference on the theme “There is no greater love. Martyrdom and the Offering of Life” in Rome from November 11 to 14, 2024. For the 2025 Jubilee Pope Francis created the “Commission of New Martyrs - Witnesses of the Faith,” which he mentioned several times in his speech. The aim of this 15-member body is to draw up a “catalog” of Christians of all denominations who have died for their faith, from the year 2000 to the present day, but whose cause for beatification has not yet been opened in Rome.
Martyrs are the perfect disciples
“In the martyr we find the features of the perfect disciple, who imitated Christ in renouncing himself and taking up his own cross, and, transformed by his charity, showed to all the salvific power of his Cross,” Pope Francis said.
He referred for example to the 21 Christian martyrs, including 20 Coptic Orthodox, killed by ISIS in 2015 in Libya. Francis had them inscribed in the Roman martyrology in May of 2023.
“They died saying ‘Jesus.’ ‘But Father, they were orthodox!’ They were Christians. They are martyrs, and the Church venerates them as her own martyrs. With martyrdom there is equality,” he said. He also strayed from his prepared speech to highlight the Anglican martyrs of Uganda. Between 1885 and 1887, twenty-two Catholic and twenty-three Anglican martyrs were executed for their faith, on the orders of King Mwanga of Buganda.
“Even today, in many parts of the world, there are many martyrs who give their life for Christ,” he emphasized. “In many cases Christianity is persecuted because, driven by faith in God, [the Christian] defends justice, truth, peace, the dignity of the person. [...] And there are many, many of other denominations, who are martyrs.”
The Pontiff also explained three elements that the Church has defined as “fundamental” for someone to be considered a martyr: the first is that the person suffers a violent and premature death to avoid denying their faith; the second is that the killing is caused by hatred against the faith or virtues connected to it; and third, that the victim has an “attitude of charity, patience, meekness, in imitation of the crucified Jesus.”
The offering of one’s life
Pope Francis also highlighted another path to holiness, which is “those who, inspired by Christ’s charity, voluntarily offered their lives, accepting a certain and imminent death.” The Pontiff instituted this new category in a Motu Proprio published in July 2017.
“Since it was a question of defining a new path for the causes of beatification and canonization, I established that there must be a connection between the offering of life and premature death, that the Servant of God had exercised the Christian virtues at least to an ordinary degree, and that, especially after his death, he was surrounded by the fame of holiness and its signs,” the Pope explained.
“What distinguishes the offer of life, in which the figure of the persecutor is missing, is the existence of an external, objectively assessable condition in which the disciple of Christ freely placed himself and which leads to death,” he continued. “Even in the extraordinary witness of this type of holiness, the beauty of the Christian life, which is able to make itself a gift without measure, like Jesus on the cross, shines forth.”
