Role Models of Faith: Freely Offering their Lives out of Christian Love

Understanding of Christian Martyrdom Sharpened through Apostolic Letter

According to the opinion of the evangelical theologian and mission scholar Christof Sauer, the new Apostolic Letter of Pope St. Francis with the title “There is no greater love (maiorem hac dilectionem) – on the offer of life” is to be welcomed, as far as it concerns the definition of a martyr.

IIRF staff in ecumenical conversation with catholic Bishops (right: Christof Sauer) © BQ / Warnecke

The free offering of one’s life out of Christian love has been declared a new possible way of discerning the exemplary character of deceased Christians by the Roman Catholic Church on 11 July 2017.

This positive assessment by the director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) is mainly concerned with understanding martyrdom from a Christian perspective. The debate on confessional differences is explicitly excluded.

Below we provide the full text of the comment.

Christof Sauer speaking at a congress on the persecution of Christians © Arnold, Dettingen

Sauer, who is 54 years old, hails from Germany and lives in South Africa. He is also Professor at the Evangelische Theologischen Faculteit Leuven in Belgium. He has completed extensive research on the understanding of martyrdom in the different Christian traditions for a post-doctoral thesis. In 2010 he also edited the “Bad Urach Statement – Towards an evangelical theology of suffering, persecution and martyrdom for the global church in mission”.

Downloads and Links:

• The complete comment by Christof Sauer (pdf)
• Apostolic Letter in English
• Report by Radio Vatikan (11.07.2017)
• Interview with the Rector of the Papal Lateran University, Enrico Dal Covolo (12.07.2017 in German only)
• Report in Osservatore Romano (11.7.2017)
• Christof Sauer (ed.). Bad Urach Statement. Towards an evangelical theology of suffering, persecution and martyrdom for the global church in mission. The WEA Global Issues Series. Vol. 9. Culture and Science Publishing: Bonn, 2012. 91 pp. ISBN 978-3-86269-062-6.

Tags: Christof Sauer, Franziskus, IIRF, International Institute for Religious Freedom, Catholic Church, Martyr, Martyrium, Pope, Pope Francis, römisch-katholisch