A Martyr the World Must Remember

Jul 28, 2016 by

by Fr Benedict Keily, FaithZette:

Parish priest in Normandy killed at holiest moment for Christians — and he surely won’t be the last.

One of the great gifts for a busy parish priest — and these days most parish priests are very busy indeed — is the gift of a retired or elderly priest who offers to “cover” the parish for a few weeks so that the pastor has time for some rest.

Looking at the pictures of Fr. Jacques Hamel, the elderly French priest brutally slaughtered by ISIS on Tuesday while celebrating Mass in church, I couldn’t help but think of what the pastor of the parish must be feeling.

[…] The city in which I was educated and formed as a priest, Canterbury in England, boasts one of the greatest saints in the life of the church, St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket was martyred in his own cathedral at the order of the king.

Archbishop Oscar Romero, of El Salvador, whose relics are enshrined in Canterbury’s Catholic Church, was shot within moments of uttering the words of consecration.

Fr. Ragheed Ganni was shot along with three sub-deacons outside his parish in Mosul, Iraq, on Trinity Sunday in 2007, just moments after celebrating Mass. His killers, who were followers of what self-serving politicians call “the religion of peace,” had demanded that he close the church.

Related: ISIS Kills Christians for Being Christian

As they prepared to martyr Fr. Ragheed, they asked him: “Why didn’t you close the church?” He responded, “How can I close the house of God?”

Fr. Ragheed was the secretary of Paulos Raho, the Archbishop of Mosul — and nine months after his secretary’s murder, Archbishop Raho was himself murdered.

It is not possible to list the names of all the priests martyred while celebrating Mass, not only because there are too many but because, as the great French writer Francois Mauriac said, this will not end until the last Mass is celebrated on Earth.

Read here

Read also: Priest Martyrdom a Warning to the West by Sean FitzPatrick, Crisis Magazine

 

 

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