The Coptic Church’s calendar will commemorate the martyrdom of the 21 Egyptian Christians killed by Islamic State in Libya.
The Coptic Orthodox Church made the announcement this weekend, as Pope Tawadros II said that martyrs’ names will be inserted into the Coptic Synaxarium.
The Coptic Synaxarium is the Oriental Church’s equivalent to the Roman Martyrology and this procedure is the same as canonization in the Latin Church.
On Sunday Feb.15, the Islamic State released a video entitled, «A Message Signed with Blood to the Nations of the Cross», where militiamen of the Libyan branch of DAESH (Arabic acronym of the Islamic State) beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians on a beach near Tripoli in Libya.
The next day, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, released a statement saying that the Holy Father expressed to the Coptic Pope «his profound sympathy in the pain of the Coptic Church for the recent barbaric murder of Coptic Christians by Islamic fundamentalists.»
That same evening, Pope Francis made a telephone call to the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II, to express condolences for their killings. The Holy Father offered his next morning’s Mass at Casa Santa Marta for the victims.
