In 2018, 40 missionaries (most of them priests) were killed throughout the world, almost twice as many as the 23 of the previous year. According to the data collected by Fides News Agency, 35 priests, 1 seminarian and 4 lay missionaries were killed in 2018. We use the term missionary for all the baptized, aware that “in virtue of the baptism received, every member of the People of God has become a missionary disciple” (EG 120). The missionaries lost their lives during attempted hold-ups and robberies, ferociously committed in impoverished, degraded social contexts where violence is the rule of life or where religion is used for other ends. Everywhere, these priests, religious and lay workers shared the same daily life as the common people, offering the evangelical witness of love and service to all as a sign of hope and peace, trying to alleviate the sufferings of the weakest, raising their voices in defense of their trampled rights, and denouncing evil and injustice.
