21st Century Martyrs Trivia Quiz

Answer: Dorothy Mae Stang

American-born Dorothy Stang was a naturalised Brazilian and a Catholic nun aged 73 at the time of her death in 2005. Her advocacy for the rural poor and against deforestation earned death threats from loggers and landowners. Two gunmen were witnessed killing her as she walked to a scheduled community meeting. Various trials took place of the gunmen and those accused of ordering the hit. One had been named by Stang as setting illegal fires to clear land and fined heavily as a result. Stang posthumously received the United Nations Human Rights Prize and her relics are included in the Shrine of Modern Martyrs in Rome.

Answer: Andrea Santoro

Andrea Santoro was 60 years of age when he was shot from behind whilst kneeling in prayer in 2006. He was a Catholic priest based at Trabzon on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. His assassination was one of several high-profile incidents in Turkey targeting Christians, following anti-Christian propaganda in the Turkish press.

The 16-year old assassin claimed that he was influenced by the Muhammad cartoons controversy in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten the previous year. The 9 mm pistol he used was part of a batch of weapons given to the Iraqi Army by the US, but which had gone missing.

Answer: Fabianus Tibo

There was a lot of Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia in the late 20th century and early 21st century. The worst of this were the Poso riots between 1998 and into 2000 when over 1,000 people were killed. Fabianus Tibo, an Indonesian and a Catholic, was tried with two other Christians as masterminds of the riots and given death sentences.

It was noted that few Muslims were punished for their role, and none received prison sentences of more than 15 years. Some believed that the timing of the executions was connected to the proposed execution of three Muslims for their part in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, although the government denied this.

Answer: Leonella Sgorbati

Born Rosa Maria Sgorbati in Italy, Leonella Sgorbati was a religious sister of the Consolata Missionaries, initially in Kenya and then Somalia. Her main focus was nursing and teaching nursing. She was murdered shortly after Pope Benedict XVI gave his 2006 Regensburg lecture which proved controversial for his quote from a 14th century Byzantine emperor about Islam. Mass protests in Islamic countries followed.

In Somalia, five days after the lecture, Leonella Sgarbati was gunned down along with her bodyguard outside the children's hospital where she worked as she was returning to her monastery.

She was 65 years of age.

Answer: Paulus Faraj Rahho

The chief diocese in an Eastern Catholic ecclesiastical province is known as an archeparchy. Born to a Chaldean Catholic family, Paulus Faraj Rahho had been Archeparch of Mosul since 2001, having spend most of his life in the city. With his bodyguards and driver killed, he was bundled into a trunk of a car on 29 February 2008 and was able to use his cellphone to instruct that no ransom be paid.

His kidnappers demanded that Christians pay jizya (a tax on non-Muslims), ransom of $3 million for his release, the release of some non-Iraqi Arab detainees and that Iraqi Christians raise a militia to fight US forces. His body was found about a fortnight later. Because he was in poor health, it is unclear whether he died of natural causes or was killed.

Answer: Shahbaz Bhatti

An activist for the rights of religious minorities in Pakistan, he was appointed as Federal Minister for Minority Affairs in 2008, a newly-independent ministry and the first time with cabinet-level representation. He had been receiving death threats for some time, which increased with his support for Pakistani Christians targeted in the 2009 Gojra riots and then for supporting Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian sentenced to death in 2010 for blasphemy.

He anticipated his death and recorded a video for post-death release.

He was fatally wounded when his vehicle was sprayed with bullets in 2011. He was aged 42.

Answer: Akash Bashir

A Pakistani layman, Akash Bashir was 20 years of age when he died. He was part of the security team protecting the Church of Saint John in Lahore, Pakistan. On the day in 2015, two suicide bombers went to an Anglican church and his. Hearing a bomb go off at the Anglican church, he picked out the bomber approaching his church and prevented the bomber from entering, knowing that he would likely die.

There were about 1,500 inside his church at the time. The beatification process started in 2022 and he became the second Pakistani native Servant of God, after Clement Shahbaz Bhatti (mentioned above).

Answer: Jacques Hamel

In the first quarter century, France has suffered over 50 terrorist incidents, most of them Islamic-inspired, with over 270 deaths and 1,000 injuries. One of these incidents was the killing of the 86-year-old French Catholic priest Jacques Hamel at a church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy in 2016 by two 19-year-old French-based Muslims. There were soon calls for his canonisation and the usual five-year waiting period before the start of the process was waived by the Pope.

Answer: Nicholas Pillai Pakiaranjith

Nicholas Pillai Pakiaranjith was a 40-year-old Jesuit priest and one of a number of aid workers apparently targeted by the Sri Lankan military's Deep Penetration Unit, according to some reporting. This has been denied by the Sri Lankan military. In 2007 he was travelling in a Jesuit Refugee Service van when he was killed by a claymore mine, which can be set off by remote control.

He was delivering aid to people displaced by the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Answer: John Allen Chau

The Sentinelese islanders are one of six groups of indigenous people living in the Bay of Bengal who have chosen to live without contact with the world at large. The Indian government has made it illegal to approach the island, not least because of the risk of lethal infections from diseases to which the Sentinelese have no immunity.

John Allen Chau undertook missionary training with the US-based All Nations evangelical organisation and decided that it was his mission to convert the Sentinelese to Christianity. The fishermen who illegally delivered him to the island in 2018 saw his body buried on the shore. Indian authorities were unable to recover it. He was 26 years of age.