“Convert, or die like Christ.” Those words from the most flagrant religious oppression in the world at the dawn of a new millennium might serve as an epitaph for all the hundreds of thousands who suffered persecution and death in the twentieth century – or, for that matter, since the very beginnings of Christianity. Christ made a point of telling his followers: “They have persecuted me and they will persecute you.” And the Gospel of John, after noting that Jesus knew what was in human hearts, records that the master said, “The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” It has never mattered whether the rejection of the light came from moral, religious, or political evils. All evils share a common root, and the results have everywhere been very much the same whenever the forces of light and the forces of darkness clash. – from The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History
