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The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 102-103



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Book Review

The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century:
A Comprehensive World History


The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History. By Robert Royal. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. 2000. Pp. x, 430. $39.95.)

In his study Robert Royal, president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., shows how heroic were the sufferings of members of the Catholic Church during the twentieth century. Taking a cue from Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, this survey covers the victims of persecutions in Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In that one century, millions were martyred, perhaps more than in all the previous centuries combined.

In Europe, the central focus of the work, Royal deals with both the West and East. The Russian Revolution and its consequences in Eastern Europe was responsible for the area's largest number of martyrs, among them many bishops, priests, religious, and lay persons. In Western Europe, the Spanish Civil War in the fourth decade of the century was marked by the brutal slaughter of 6,832 priests and religious, among them thirteen bishops, and the Nazi Regime, during [End Page 102] the madness of its twelve years, brought about the suffering of individual religious groups of both men and women, including the Franciscan Maximilian Kolbe and the Carmelite Edith Stein, plus a number of distinguished lay persons.

As for Latin America, the Mexican Revolution in the first half of the century and the unrest in El Salvador in the second half of the century brought about more martyrs such as Miguel Pro and Oscar Romero. Other countries like Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay also produced victims killed in hatred of the faith.

In treating Asia, Royal recalls the martyrs of China, Korea, and Vietnam. In China, the victory of the Communists in 1949 began the persecution of both foreign and native Catholics among the laity and clergy, certainly in a greater degree than in either Korea or Vietnam. The author also covers areas of recent persecutions like Indonesia.

In Africa, Algeria, from the time of Charles de Foucauld, to the end of the century, when seven Trappists were slaughtered, is not the only site of persecution. While the enslavement of Christians in Sudan and the fighting among Christians in Rwanda are of recent memory, there were other victims during the upheavals from Angola to Uganda, particularly the deplorable conflict between the Catholic Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi.

In covering the Middle East, Royal's work mentions the slaughter of some 30,000 Armenian Roman Catholics. The Ottomans were forcing Armenian Catholics out of the eastern part of Turkey in 1915 when the recently beatified Archbishop Ignazio C. Maloyan became one of those victims. Other nations of the Middle East, including Israel, are not neglected, especially when it is a question of the violation of human rights.

Though Royal's study may appear uneven in its selection of martyrs and countries in eighteen chapters, it is still a valuable contribution to world history. While many books about the events of the twentieth century tend to emphasize what has gained the attention of the secular press, this study takes one behind the scenes to present what usually does not emerge on the front pages of the world's newspapers but what, nevertheless, is essential to understanding fully what really happened in the twentieth century.

 



Vincent A. Lapomarda, S.J.
College of the Holy Cross

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