Pope Francis Quotes

The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard by everyone who can still distinguish between good and evil.

So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you're wondering whether you'll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him. There are safer ways to live than by being a Christian.

Let us consider what the glorious Virgin endured, and what the holy apostles suffered, and we shall find that they who were nearest to Jesus Christ were the most afflicted.

The blood of Christians is seed.

Persecutions are inevitable as a Christian. We are not greater than our Master, Jesus Christ, in whose Holy Spirit we gain strength to endure.

… they shed the blood of Christians like that of the pagans

Persecution has come upon us, right honorable brethren, and persecution in the severest form. Shepherds are persecuted that their flocks may be scattered. And the worst of all is that those who are being treated ill cannot accept their sufferings in proof of their testimony, nor can the people reverence the athletes as in the army of martyrs, because the name of Christians is applied to the persecutors. The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers.

Christians have ... identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with forces of evil, and so with Satan... Nor have things improved since. The blood-soaked history of persecution, torture, murder, and destruction perpetrated in the name of religion is difficult to grasp, let alohne summarize, from the slaughter of Christians to the Crusades to the Inquisitiion to the Reformation to the European witchcraze to colonialization to today's bitter coflict in the Middle East.

Christ's followers cannot expect better treatment in the world than their Master had.

If the Tiber rises too high, or the Nile too low, the remedy is always feeding Christians to the lions.

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

If you find yourself mistreated, misunderstood, and mocked as a Christian, take heart, for so they did to the Christ.

The blood of the Christians is seed

Radical Christians are not people who wear Christian t-shirts. Radical Christians are those who bear fruit of the Holy Spirit...A little boy, Andrew, a Muslim shot him five times through the stomach and left him on a sidewalk simply because he said, 'I am so afraid, but I can not deny Jesus Christ! Please don't kill me! But I will not deny Him!' He died in a pool of blood, and you talk about being a radical Christian because you wear a t-shirt!

One of the many burdens of the person professing Christianity has always been the odium likely to be heaped upon him by fellow Christians quick to smell out, denounce and punish fraud, hypocrisy and general unworthiness among those who assert the faith. In ruder days, disputes about what constituted a fully qualified Christian often led to sordid quarrels in which the disputants tortured, burned and hanged each other in the conviction that torture, burning and hanging were Christian things to do.

Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians.

I have suffered as much as Martin Luther King. Only I didn't get the bullet. And I would have taken the bullet if I could have.

Persecution of Christians is growing around the world, and Congress needs to pay more attention to it.

Christians who believe in the Bible believe that it is their job to bring others the joy of salvation. Even if they're murdered, beaten to death, imprisoned - that's what you do for God.

The more you mow us down, the more numerous we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.

As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns.

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

A religion that requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil’s propagation.

The hocus-pocus phantasy of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs.