ROME — The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis will canonize 11 Christians hacked to pieces by radical Muslims in 1860 rather than renounce their faith in Jesus.
The eleven men, known now as the “martyrs of Damascus,” were captured by Shia Druze Muslims in July 1860 and ordered to convert to Islam. When they refused, they were chopped up by their captors.
The martyrs, who were beatified by Pope Pius XI on October 10, 1926, were a group of Franciscan missionaries and laymen who were living in Damascus, Syria. Seven of the martyrs were Spaniards, one was Austrian, and three were Syrian.
The martyrdom of the eleven was just the tip of the iceberg. The Islamic rebels had already pillaged or burned every Maronite Christian village of the main and southern parts of Lebanon and some six thousand Christians were murdered or maimed.
The massacre broke out in Damascus on July 9, and after just three days the Muslims had killed more than 3,000 adult males.
Among these were the eight Franciscan Friars Minor and three laymen, led by Father Manuel Ruiz López, the superior of the convent. Three of the priests of the community were in Damascus to learn the Arabic language in preparation for their missionary work.
At midnight the Muslims entered the convent and ordered the members of the community to convert to Islam or face torture and death.
When they refused, Father Ruiz was beheaded with a sword then dismembered. Another priest, Father Carmelo Volta, was beaten to death with a cudgel. Another, Father Pedro Soler, was cut up with a sword while Father Engelbert Kolland was chopped to pieces with an axe. Two lay brothers of the community were hurled from the tower of the church where they had taken refuge.
Curiously, the first canonization presided over by Pope Francis in 2013, shortly after becoming pope, was a group of 813 “Martyrs of Otranto,” beheaded by Ottoman Turkish Muslims in 1480 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith.
The siege of Otranto, comprising the massacre of its inhabitants, was the last significant military attempt by a Muslim force to conquer southern Italy. The slaughter is remembered as a milestone in European history because the heroic sacrifice had the effect that the Italian Peninsula was never conquered by Muslim troops.
