Heroes, by the grace of God

Catholic Herald, 15 September 2018

The martyrs teach us that witness to the truth is always possible

Twenty-five years ago, St John Paul II concluded his encyclical on the moral life by pointing to the martyrs. There are always circumstances when the requirements of the moral law, the cost of discipleship, seem too high. It’s tempting to think that the moral law is too difficult, or even that man is incapable of the full demands of discipleship. The Council of Trent taught that such conclusions were anathema, but John Paul went back further to St Paul, arguing that such thinking “empties the Cross of Christ of its power”.

Veritatis Splendor, dated August 6, 1993, was actually released in October of that year. And the previous month, Blessed Pino Puglisi, the anti-mafia priest who was murdered in retaliation for John Paul’s denunciation of the mafia on his visit to Sicily in May 1993, confirmed its teaching. The martyrs teach us that witness to the truth is always possible. All the generations of Sicilians – including the leadership of the Church, both clergy and lay – who argued that it was impossible to oppose the mafia concluded that the Cross of Christ was not powerful enough. Blessed Pino, the parish priest, knew better.

Pope Francis will travel to Sicily to mark the 25th anniversary of Blessed Pino’s murder, which took place on September 15, 1993, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows – and Don Pino’s 56th birthday.

Don Pino was a martyr not just during John Paul’s pontificate; he was also martyred precisely because of John Paul. In that, he was like his recently beatified fellow Italian, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, who was killed in Somalia by Islamist extremists in response to Benedict XVI’s address at Regensburg.

More to the point, Don Pino is a martyr very much like Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, the Polish “chaplain” of the Solidarity movement who was murdered in 1984 by the communist secret police for being a local champion of what St John Paul II proclaimed on his apostolic visits to Poland.

Continue reading at The Catholic Herald: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2018/09/15/heroes-by-the-grace-of-god/