We join the Pope’s World Prayer Network, which this month invites us to pray “for the martyrs of our day, witnesses to Christ”.

We pray that those in various parts of the world who risk their lives for the Gospel will infect the Church with their courage and missionary drive.

“This month I would like to tell you a story that is a reflection of the Church today. It is the story of a little-known witness of faith.

While visiting a refugee camp in Lesbos, a man said to me, -Father, I am a Muslim. My wife was a Christian. Terrorists came to our country, looked at us and asked us our religion. They saw my wife with the crucifix and told her to throw it on the ground. She did not and they slit her throat in front of me-. That’s exactly what happened.

I know he did not hold a grudge. He focused on his wife’s example of love, a love for Christ that led her to accept and be faithful until death.

Brothers, sisters, there will always be martyrs among us. It is a sign that we are on the right path.

An experienced person told me that there are more martyrs today than in the beginning of Christianity.

The courage of martyrs, the witness of martyrs, is a blessing to all.

Let us pray that those in various parts of the world who risk their lives for the Gospel will infect the Church with their courage and missionary drive. Open to the grace of martyrdom”.

Pope Francis

Poster for Day 2024: Faithful Catholics participate in a march commemorating the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero (1917-1980) in San Salvador on March 24, 2021. MARVIN RECINOS – copyright AFP.

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On 24 March 2024, on the date commemorating the assassination of Msgr. Oscar Romero on 24 March 1980 in San Salvador, there is the 32nd Day of Missionary Martyrs.

“For the new martyrs, witnesses of Christ”, is the intention of prayer for the month of March 2024 of the Video of the Pope’s global initiative to spread the monthly prayer intentions of the Holy Father developed by the Pope’s World Prayer Network: