A ‘bolt out of the blue’: Pope Francis sets off an ecumenical earthquake
Pope Francis made history on Thursday, when he added to the Roman Martyrology the names of twenty-one Coptic Christians martyred in Libya in 2015, giving them a date on the Roman calendar of saints and allowing Catholics to honor them publicly in the Catholic liturgy.
The date for the optional liturgical commemoration of the Coptic Martyrs of Libya is February 15th, the anniversary of their martyrdom at the hands of terrorists belonging to the so-called Islamic State.
The spiritual leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria, canonized the Martyrs of Libya in his Church only a week after their murder. Almost immediately, shrines and other celebrations and commemorations of the victims as heroes of the faith sprang up in Catholic and other Orthodox Churches and Protestant communities around the world, including in Rome.
Though not entirely without precedent – there is little utterly unexampled in the history of a two-thousand-year-old global institution – it would be gross understatement to characterize Pope Francis’s move on Thursday as a mere surprise. Francis’s announcement has captured the attention of the entire world – not only professional Christians of the chattering classes – and stirred frequently emotional discussion across the spectrum of opinion and discourse within the Catholic community and beyond it.
Two distinct but related reasons explain why Pope Francis’s extraordinary act is of great moment, one psychological and the other political.
The gruesome mass-murder of twenty Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians and one man from sub-Saharan Africa happened only eight years ago, at the high water mark of the brutal Islamic State’s brief and blood-soaked career of destruction and desolation. The man from Ghana, named Matthew Ayariga, was either a Protestant or nominal Christian, or else unbaptized. Ayariga drew strength and inspiration from the great courage of his companions, who died with the name of Our Lord on their lips. “Their God is my God,” Ayariga said when the IS killers offered to let him live if he forswore Jesus Christ. Ayariga thus chose martyrdom with them.
