The “new” kinds of martyrs

congoThe the murder of Assumptionist Fr. Vincent Machozi underlines the inadequacy of traditional Christian concepts of what counts as “martyrdom” in current circumstances. Over the centuries, Catholicism has held that in order to be seen as a martyr, someone had to die in odium fidei. As St. John Paul was the first to note, however, there are new kinds of “new” martyrs.