The New Martyrs
The New 20th Century Martyrs of the Russian Church, killed by Communists, in the Icon of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. In 1917, the Russian Orthodox Church numbered about 210,000 members of the clergy (100,000 monks and more than 110,000 diocesan priests). More than 130,000 of them were shot in the period between 1917 and 1941, during the violent persecutions through which the communist regime tried to wipe out the Christian faith in the Soviet Union. As many as 250 of the bishops present in Russia in 1917 were shot. The other ones survived in prisons or concentration camps, or in any case under severely restrictive conditions. In 1941 there were only four free bishops. The persecution hit Catholics as well. In 1917 there lived in Russia about two million Catholics who could count on about one thousand priests, 600 churches and as many chapels, two seminaries and one theological university fa...