At this morning’s mass in St. Martha’s House, on April 13, Pope Francis said persecution has always been the “daily bread” of Christians. This persecution is either violent or is the “white-glove” kind, in other words isolation and the inability to contest “laws” that go against the Creator.
Like St. Stephen, the first martyr or the children who were killed by Herod, today too there are many Christians who are massacred for their faith in Jesus Christ, while others are “politely” persecuted with “white gloves”, that is they do not shed any blood but experience marginalisation and are robbed of their “freedom and even the freedom of conscientious objection!” Pope Francis spoke out against this at this morning’s mass in St. Martha’s House.
Today’s liturgy looked at the story of Stephen’s martyrdom, narrated in the Acts of the Apostles: this text encouraged the Bishop of Rome to reiterate and reinforce certain observations about a reality that has formed a crucial part of Church history for the past 2000 years: persecution. The Pope distinguished between two types of persecution: the kind that is violent and bloody, like being torn to shreds by wild beasts in front of an exultant crowd watching from the stands or being killed by a bomb on the way out from mass perhaps; then there is a “white-glove” kind of persecution which is wrapped in “culture”: the faithful is confined to a corner of society and lose their job if they do not adapt to laws that “go against the will of God the Creator”.
“Persecution,” Francis said, “is the Church’s daily bread. Jesus said so. When we go sightseeing in Rome and we visit the Colosseum, we think that martyrs were those who were killed with lions. But those people or those others over there were not the only martyrs. Martyrs can also be ordinary men and women: today, on Easter day, just three weeks ago… Those Christians who were celebrating Easter in Pakistan were martyred because they were celebrating the Risen Christ. And so the Church’s history goes on with its martyrs.”
“But,” the Pope clarified, “there is another kind of persecution that is not much talked about, it is disguised as culture, modernity, progress: it is, I would say a little ironically a ‘polite’ persecution”: it happens “when a person is persecuted not for professing the name of Christ but for wanting to have and express the values of the Son of God. It is a persecution against God the Creator through his children! And so, we see every day that powers make laws that oblige people to take this path and a nation that does not follow these modern, cultured rules or at least does not want to include them in its legislation, is accused and politely persecuted.” This “polite” persecution is that kind that “deprives people of their freedom and the freedom of conscientious objection!”
According to Francis it is the “persecution of the world” that “takes away our freedom”, while “God made us free” to bear witness to the “Father who created us and Christ who saved us”.
The Pope added that this persecution “has a head: the head of ‘polite’ education, Jesus named him: the ruler of this world. When powers want to impose attitudes, laws that go against the dignity of the Son of God, they persecute Christians and go against he will of God the Creator. This is the great apostasy. And so Christians’ lives go on with these two forms of persecution.” Francis concluded by recalling: “The Lord also promised us he would never leave us. ‘Beware, beware! Do not succumb to the spirit of the world. Beware! But go forth, I will be with you’.”
