Vatican experts said Monday that the two children killed in the shooting occurred last month in a Catholic church in Minneapolis (United States) could, someday, be included in the list of “new martyrs and witnesses of faith” that they are compiling.
Harper Moyski, 10 years old, and Fletcher Merkel, 8, died while attending a school mass in the parish of the Annunciation on August 27, which led some to ask if they could be considered killing martyrs “for hatred of faith.”
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“If the diocese or other local ecclesial instances present us to these figures as witnesses of the faith, we will examine them and see if we can include them in the list,” said Archbishop Fabio Fabene, president of the Vatican Commission of New Mártires – witnesses of faith.
The commission, created in 2023 by Pope Francis under the Dicascle for the causes of the Saints, is collecting a archive on the life of Christian martyrs, both Catholics and non -Catholics, which have been killed in the new millennium.
Fabene and other experts explained on September 8 that the commission selection criteria are not the same as the Church to formally recognize a martyr through beatification or canonization. “They are two totally different things,” said the archbishop.
Andrea Riccardi, vice president of the Commission and founder of the community of Sant’Egidio, said that the work of the commission is “to preserve stories and names in the heart of the Church, so that your memory is not lost.” The inclusion in the list of “new martyrs” does not equal a beatification, he clarified.
Riccardi and other experts referred to the victims of the Minneapolis shooting in response to a question of a journalist, during a press conference to present an ecumenical prayer that will be chaired by Pope Leo XIV on September 14.
The celebration, which commemorates the martyrs and witnesses of the faith of the 21st century, will take place in the Basilica of San Pablo Extramuros at the Fiestation of the Exaltation of the Cross, which also coincides with the 70th birthday of Pope Leo XIV.
Delegates from 24 Christian churches and traditions will attend the ecumenical service, including the metropolite Anthony Sevryuk, president of the Department of Ecclesiastical Foreign Affairs of the Russian Orthodox patriarchy.
The event recalls a similar ecumenical liturgy held in the Colosseum during the Jubilee of the year 2000.
When Francisco established the commission in 2023, he wrote that “the martyrs are more numerous in our time than in the first centuries: they are bishops, priests, consecrated, laity and families that, in different countries of the world, with the gift of their life, have offered the supreme proof of charity.”
With a view to the Jubileo de la Esperanza 2025, Pope Francis asked the commission to elaborate an updated list of Christian men and women killed by their faith in the first quarter of the 21st century.
Experts said Monday that their catalog, which they hope to publish eventually, includes 1,640 Christians dead in different circumstances of persecution and hate worldwide.
“The heart of this work is memory. As Saint John Paul II said, the names of those who died for their faith should not be lost,” said Riccardi.
Translated and adapted by ACI Press. Originally published in CNA.
Hannah Brockhaus
Hannah Brockhaus is correspondent in Rome by Catholic News Agency. He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from the State University Truman in Missouri.