A total of 20 missionaries – including an Irish-born American bishop – died violently in the service of the faith during 2023, according to new figures released from the Vatican.
Eight of the dead were priests, one was a seminarian, one a Benedictine novice, seven laypeople, including women, and two described as “non-religious men”.
The tally, released by Fides, the Vatican-based information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies, represents an increase of two deaths on the previous year.
The most dangerous continent for missionary work in 2023 was Africa, for the fifth year in succession, where nine missionaries were killed, including five priests and the seminarian.
Four of these died in Nigeria. They included was Fr Isaac Achi, 61, who was burned alive during an attack by an armed group in his parish in the diocese of Minna.
Two missionaries were also murdered in Burkina Faso, a priest was killed in an attack in his parish in Tanzania, while a religious brother was stabbed in Cameroon and a parish priest knifed to death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Americas also proved to be comparatively dangerous territory for missionaries, with four killed in Mexico – two priests and two women.
The fatalities in the neighbouring United States included Auxiliary Bishop David O'Connell of Los Angeles (pictured second from left), who was born in Cork, the Irish Republic, and who moved to the United States in 1979. The 69-year-old was shot dead in his home at Hacienda Heights and his housekeeper's husband, Carlos Medina, was later charged with his murder.
In December Fr Stephen Gutgsell, a priest at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, also lost his life when he stabbed by an intruder.
Four lay men and women died violently in Asia because of their faith and a layman was killed in Europe.
The Asian dead include Junrey Barbante and Janine Arenas, Filipino Catholic students, murdered during a bomb attack on a Mass at Mindanao State University in Marawi City.
It also includes Nahida Khalil Anton and daughter Samar Kamal Anton, two active parishioners of the Holy Family Church in Gaza, were killed by sniper fire as they walked to the adjacent convent of the Missionaries of Charity. They both belonged to a group of Catholic and Orthodox women working with poor and disabled people.
The list also includes Diego Valencia, sacristan of Nuestra Senora de La Palma, in Algeciras, near Cadiz, who was murdered by Moroccan armed with a machete.
Fides uses the term “missionary” to cover baptised people, following the logic that all the baptised are “agents of evangelisation”.
While it avoids the term “martyr”, the annual list of fatalities is made up of those baptised who have died violently while engaged in the life of the Church.
On the December 26 Feast of St Stephen, the first martyr, Pope Francis paid tribute to the continued witness of the faith to the point of death.
The Holy Father said: “There are still those – and there are many of them – who suffer and die to bear witness to Jesus, just as there are those who are penalised at various levels for the fact of acting in a way consistent with the Gospel, and those who strive every day to be faithful, without ado, to their good duties, while the world jeers and preaches otherwise.
“These brothers and sisters may also seem to be failures, but today we see that it is not the case. Now as then, in fact, the seed of their sacrifices, which seems to die, germinates and bears fruit, because God, through them, continues to work miracles, changing hearts and saving men and women.”
Introducing the list, Fides noted that one of the distinctive traits that most of the victims have in common is the “ordinariness” of their lives and of the circumstances in which they were murdered.
It said some were on their way to celebrate Mass or to carry out pastoral activities in some distant community, offering their “simple evangelical witness” in difficult contexts marked by poverty, violence, social degradation, and oppression.
“They could have gone elsewhere, moved to safer places, or desisted from their Christian commitments, perhaps reducing them, but they did not do so, even though they were aware of the situation and the dangers they faced every day”, it said.
