Pope Francis has advanced the sainthood causes of 19 men and women Religious, including a bishop and seven Trappist monks, who died in Algeria between 1994 and 1996.
The Pope met with the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato, on Saturday to authorise the declaration of martyrdom of those “ killed in hatred of the Faith”.
The 19 died at the hands of Islamist militants in Algeria during a conflict between the government and the Islamic Salvation Front, a fundamentalist political movement.
The monks – whose story is told in the award-winning film ‘Of Gods and Men’ released in 2010 – were kidnapped from their convent on 27 March 1996 after armed men stormed the building. The French Brothers were beheaded two months later. Bishop Claverie was killed along with his driver by a bomb hidden in his car.
The prior, Father Christian de Chergé, had written his spiritual testament some time before, contemplating his fate as a victim of the terrorism “which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria”.
Making it clear that he “could not desire such a death”, he said he would instead “immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, delighting in the differences”.
Father Christian ends by forgiving his murderer, “the friend of my final moment”, and praying “may we find each other, happy ‘good thieves’, in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both”.
The Pope’s declaration also recognised as a martyr Romanian Catholic lay woman, Veronica Antal, who was killed in 1958 during an attempted rape.
Photograph: A scene from the film "Of Gods and Men". The seven Trappist monks depicted in the film are among the victims of Algeria's civil war. (CNS photo/Sony Pictures Classics)
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