Pope Francis creates a Commission for the new martyrs

On 5 July, the Holy See published a letter from Pope Francis establishing a Commission of New Martyrs - Witnesses of the Faith. This commission, created within the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints and presided over by the Prefect of the same Dicastery, has the task of drawing up "a Catalogue of all those who have shed their blood to confess Christ and bear witness to his Gospel" since the beginning of this century.

The singular feature of the Commission's work is that its research will concern not only the martyrs of the Catholic Church, but also those of all Christian traditions, and it will collect "the testimonies of life, up to the shedding of blood, of these sisters and brothers of ours, so that their memory can stand as a treasure cherished by the Christian community". Recalling the joint celebration of the new martyrs in Rome's Colosseum during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Holy Father announced that a similar celebration will take place during the next Jubilee in 2025.

The creation of this Commission follows the Holy Father's recent announcement, made during the visit of His Holiness Pope Tawadros II to Rome, that the twenty-one Coptic Christian martyrs killed in Libya on 15 February 2015 would be included in the Roman Martyrology. Referring to these martyrs, Pope Francis said that they had been "baptised not only in water and in the Spirit, but also in blood, a blood that is the seed of unity for all Christ's disciples".

_{Photo: Icon of the "21 Martyrs of Libya", Antoun Rezk, 2015.}