"in the defeat, in the humiliation of those who suffer because of the Gospel, a strength that the world does not know is at work: it is the strength of love, unarmed and victorious, even in its seeming defeat". It was said by the Pope, as he stopped at the six altars of the Basilica of Saint Bartholomew, which "commemorate the Christians who fell under the totalitarian violence of Communism, of Nazism, those killed in America, in Asia and Oceania, in Spain and Mexico, in Africa". In this way, according to Benedict XVI, "we ideally go over many painful events of the past century", in which "many people fell as they were carrying out the evangelising mission of the Church", others "were killed in hatred of faith" and "quite a few immolated themselves not to desert the needy, the poor, the faithful". "They are so many!", exclaimed the Pontiff, recalling that John Paul II had defined them "a great tapestry of Christian humankind of the twentieth century". "Christ’s testimony, through to the shedding of His blood, speaks louder than the divisions of the past", repeated Benedict XVI, and he added: "It seems violence, totalitarianisms, persecution, blind brutishness are stronger, silencing the voice of the witnesses of the faith, who can humanly look like the defeated of history", but in "Jesus Resurrected we understand the meaning of martyrdom".
