An emergency process must be adopted by the Holy See for the rapid canonisation of contemporary martyrs. For this all the usual time-consuming procedures would need to be set aside. All that should be required would be personal identification and an authentic report by trustworthy witnesses that a person had been ordered to deny Christ under threat of death and had been killed for refusing so to deny.
There was even such a case reported on the BBC recently by the father of one of the girls kidnapped in Nigeria. Similarly, there are people who are killed as individuals or in groups simply because they are identified as Christians on buses or in their villages. This would definitely qualify as "in odium fidei" and be ground for martyrdom. Pope Francis, using his full plenipotentiary powers, could create a committee or committees with all the necessary authority to recommend such canonisations.
The swift public canonisation of such martyrs would have several good effects. Firstly, it would strongly affirm the true nature of martyrdom as a declaration of the Christian faith. This would be in refutation of the widely current misuse of the term. Secondly, it might help to protect Christians. Terrorists might be reluctant to create publicly identified Christian martyrs who could interfere with their own martyr propaganda.
Thirdly, we would create a platform to proclaim the true meaning of martyrdom in terms of people who are willing to give their own lives for Christ's name but not to kill others since they are followers of Christ, the "Prince of Peace". Fourthly, it might bring the matter of persecution of Christians more emphatically to the attention of our rather indifferent secular minded Western Governments
This is no doubt, a radical suggestion, but going further there might be considerable apostolic advantages by also including non-Catholic Christians who give their lives for their Faith in Christ, if their own Churches made no objection. Such a practice would do much to bring us together.
Fr Damian Grimes MHM, Conwy Valley, Gwynedd
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