Pope Calls on World to Defend Modern Christian Martyrs

On Monday April 6, at a packed service in St. Petersburg Square, Pope Francis called upon the international community to help Christians being “martyred” for their faith. The pope’s call to action came just days after the al-Qaeda aligned group al-Shabaab targeted Christian students at Garissa University in Kenya, killing 148 students. Similar atrocities have been carried out in Libya—21 Egyptian Coptics were beheaded in February—as well as in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria, which has seen hundreds of Christians kidnapped, displaced and terrorized by extremist groups. As the Pope noted, “I truly hope that the international community does not turn a blind eye” to our “brothers and sisters who are being persecuted, exiled, killed and beheaded solely because they are Christian.” The video is a powerful reminder of the tenuous relationship between faith, foreign policy and realpolitik.