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Featured Term (selected at random):WEXFORD Shrine of Our Lady's Isle offshore, in the southeastern Ireland. Known as the Church of the Bright Plain since the seventh century, it was the place of a planned massacre by Oliver Cromwell in Reformation times, where many of the faithful were killed while attending High Mass. The shrine was destroyed except for a small statue of Our Lady. A church was rebuilt on the mainland, but the original site remains in ruins, although it has been visited by thousands. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal...

The five-year-old terrorists: Youngsters trained to kill with pistols and assault rifles in shocking pictures from al Qaeda's heartland Children trained to use deadly arms by militants on Pakistan border Many are orphaned sons of al Qaeda 'martyrs' Terror camps in Syria and Somalia also claim to be training boy soldiers By Sam Webb PUBLISHED: 14:19 EST, 18 November 2012 | UPDATED: 14:19 EST, 18 November 2012 These terrifying pictures show children as young as five being trained to kill with pistols and deadly AK-47 assault rifles. They were taken from footage of an al Qaeda terror camp in north...

If you are even slightly awake about the world news today, it is no surprise that Christians are being killed, raped, and brutalized throughout the Islamic world. However, there is a place where you can go to escape the dreadful and relentless details of Christian annihilation by Islam. You can just go to church. For example, Christians were killed this week in Nigeria. Nothing out of the ordinary -- indeed, in the world of Christian persecution, this is routine. And so the response found in nearly every church to the murder of Christians is...wait for it...complete silence. Not a mention...

Featured Term (selected at random):GRIDIRON Symbol of St. Lawrence the deacon. Martyred in A.D. 258 by being roasted alive on a gridiron. By the fourth century venerated as one of the famous martyrs of Rome, he included in the Canon of the Mass. St. Vincent (d. 304), a Spanish deacon martyred in the same way, also has the gridiron for his emblem. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

A report in the Palestinian Authority-based media said that the two PA Arabs who were killed by a Jewish trucker during a robbery attempt on Sunday were “martyrs”. The Arabic report in the PA-based WAFA news agency said, “A funeral of thousands of people in the town of Yatta south of Hebron, took place on Sunday afternoon with the bodies of martyrs Naim Mohammed Najjar (32 years) and Anwar Khalil Abed Rabbo (35 years). The report added, “Speakers denounced the crimes of the settlers under the continued support and protection of the Israeli occupation army, demanding the international community to...

As was expected, the Palestinian Authority glorified the 91 terrorists whose bodies were returned by Israel, as a gesture by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research organization, which monitors and translates the PA-based media, has translated and presented on its website several incidents in which the PA glorified the dead terrorists. The PA gave the terrorists a military funeral for heroes, with the participation of Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and other PA dignitaries. All the returned terrorists, including many suicide bombers who murdered Israeli civilians, were presented as heroic and...

The "Religion of Peace" strikes again...........

Saint Paul Miki and Companions Denver, Colo., Feb 5, 2012 / 08:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Feb. 6, the Catholic Church honors the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, a group of native Japanese Catholics and foreign missionaries who suffered death for their faith in the year 1597.During the 16th century, the Catholic faith reached Japan by the efforts of the Jesuit missionary Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552). Jesuit outreach to the Japanese continued after his death, and around 200,000 Japanese had entered the Church by 1587.Religious tensions led to a period of persecution during that year, during which many churches were...

MK Ahmed Tibi (Raam-Taal) praised the Palestinian Authority’s “martyrs” at a ceremony held last week on the occasion of "Palestinian Martyrs Day” and sponsored by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The ceremony, which was broadcast on official PA TV, was translated by the Palestinian Media Watch research organization, which presented the translated video on its website. “In the history of the peoples and their battles, the Palestinian shahid (martyr) is the height of glory,” Tibi said. “There is no higher value than death for the sake of Allah. The martyr is the one who breaks through and with his blood draws...

Rome, Italy, Oct 30, 2011 / 04:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On the first anniversary of the massacre at Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Cathedral, the 42 worshipers killed were remembered as martyrs and their intercession was sought on behalf of Iraq’s still besieged Christian community. Three children, two priests and a pregnant woman were among those killed when five Islamic militants linked to the terrorist group al-Qaida scaled an outer wall, entered the church and opened fire on Oct. 31, 2010.Today, in an intimate memorial Mass held at Rome's Santa Maria della Concezione Church, Catholics prayed for the living — the...

Three Catholic martyrs executed under the Nazi regime were beatified in Germany today, June 25. The event was also noteworthy for its rememberance of their Lutheran companion.Fathers Hermann Lange, Eduard Müller and Johannes Prassek, along with Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink, were guillotined in a Hamburg prison in November 1943. The Nazi regime found them guilty of “defeatism, malice, favoring the enemy and listening to enemy broadcasts.” At a ceremony in the northern German city of Lubeck, Cardinal Angelo Amato, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, declared the trio of Catholic clergy to be ‘blessed.’ He...

Countercultural Witnesses The Uganda Martyrs By: Bob French In his living room wall, Matthew Segaali has a painting of twenty-two young men and boys in Ugandan tribal dress. Some of them are standing in front of a backdrop of upraised spears; the rest, in front of flames as tall as they are.While it appears that they are about to be put to death, the expressions on their faces are of peace, trust, and even joy. One of them is holding a palm branch; others have their hands folded in prayer; and others are clasping a cross or a rosary.They...

A simple map I made showing where the apostles died and how they died.

Anacleto González Flores was born on 13 July 1888 in Tepatitlán, Jalisco, Mexico. He was greatly involved in social and religious activities and was an enthusiastic member of the Catholic Association of Young Mexicans (ACJM). He taught classes in catechism, was dedicated to works of charity and wrote articles and books with a Christian spirit. In 1922 he married María Concepción Guerrero and they had two children. By 1926, the situation in Mexico had worsened and Anacleto, who up until this time had advocated passive, non-violent resistance, joined the cause of the National League for the Defence of Religious Freedom...

Coptic Christians say they are the target of the worst wave of violence to engulf Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak was forced from office Feb. 11. Thirteen people were killed in street battles that erupted in Cairo Tuesday and Wednesday after Copts (who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt's 80 million people) blocked streets to protest the destruction of a church. While some reports say as many as five of the dead were Muslims, Copts maintain that all 13 were Christians. The Copts have long complained of pervasive discrimination at the hands of Egypt's Muslim majority. Reports say the church...

An Afghan physiotherapist will be executed within three days for converting to Christianity. Said Musa, 45, has been held for eight months in a Kabul prison were he claims he has been tortured and sexually abused by inmates and guards. Mr Musa, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion in the 1990s, has worked for the Red Cross for 15 years and helps to treat fellow amputees. He was arrested in May last year as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy following a crackdown on Christians within Afghanistan. He claims he was visited by a...

Bhubaneswar (Agenzia Fides) – “This was murder. My brother had blood oozing out of his mouth, hands and legs tied in an unnatural way and his clothes were torn,” Fides was told by Dushashan Pradhan, brother to Pentecostal Christian Pastor Saul Pradhan, 45 years old, found dead on 11 January in the village of Pakala, in Kandhamal district, Orissa, theatre for the anti-Christian massacres of 2008. The Pastor was found dead in circumstances which still need to be ascertained, but the police called to investigate the case said that it would be “an accidental death due to freezing.” The official...

A Meditation On the “Bloody Octave” of ChristmasBy: Msgr. Charles Pope We are in the midst of the Christmas Octave and we might sentimentally think that its features would be delightful pleasant, Gospels of joy and promise. And yet it is an Octave filled with blood as we shall see.What is an Octave? But first, there may be some of you who wonder what is meant by and “Octave.” An Octave is a period of eight days wherein a feast of the Church is celebrated for that whole period as though it were all the same day. In the...

Feast of the Holy Innocents (Childermas)   In the second chapter of the Book of Matthew is recorded the story of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, an event which recalls the Pharaoh's instructions to midwives during the time Israel was enslaved in Egypt: Exodus 1:15-16, 22: And the king of Egypt spoke to the midwives of the Hebrews: of whom one was called Sephora, the other Phua, Commanding them: When you shall do the office of midwives to the Hebrew women, and the time of delivery is come: if it be a man child, kill it: if a woman, keep...

Cardinal Francis George, speaking at the fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told those assembled that the two priests slain in the Syrian Catholic cathedral on October 31 were killed while offering Mass and hearing confessions. “Our brothers in the priesthood, Father Thaer Saad and Father Boutros Wassim, were slain as one celebrated Mass and the other heard confessions,” Cardinal George said. “Father Thaer prayed and asked a terrorist to spare the lives of his parishioners before he died. Father Raphael [a third priest] moved parishioners to a safer location in the Church and was grievously...