Africa-Press – Mozambique. Most of the 18 Catholic missionaries murdered in 2022 were not carrying out high-risk missions when they were assassinated but were simply “immersed and submerged in the ordinariness of their lives and their apostolic work,” said the editor of Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news service.
The 13 priests, three religious sisters, one seminarian and one lay leader recalled by Fides were killed in the midst of carrying out their daily service “for the good of all, including — sometimes — their own executioners,” wrote Gianni Valente, the editor, in a column Dec. 30.
Since the 1980s Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, has published a list of missionaries killed around the world. The agency always notes that the list is not complete and that while it recognizes those killed as witnesses of the faith, it leaves the technical judgment of whether they are martyrs to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Half of the 18 missionaries listed by Fides were killed in Africa; eight were killed in Latin America or the Caribbean and one was killed in Asia.
In the past few years, Fides said, Africa and Latin America “have alternated in first place in this tragic ranking.”
And, the agency said, from 2001 to 2021, 526 missionaries have been killed in the world.
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