In the struggles that divided the Anglican community in the 1830s one of the hardest fighters was Thomas Arnold, reforming headmaster of Rugby School and polemical Broad Church divine. He attacked the Tractarians in a notorious article called ‘The Oxford Malignants’ (though the title was an editorial insertion) and regarded Newman as his principal opponent; his opposition was quite impersonal, since he believed that he had never met Newman. He was annoyed when it was reported by a third party that Newman was alleged to have asked if Arnold was a Christian. Arnold’s vehemence spoiled his hopes for a bishopric, but Lord Melbourne, the sympathetic Whig Prime Minister, had him appointed to the Regius Chair of History at Oxford. Early in 1842 Dr Arnold was in Oxford delivering his first series of lectures, accompanied by his family; his eldest son Matthew was already in residence as a Balliol undergraduate. On 2nd February Arnold dined in Oriel, his old college, where Newman had been a fellow for many years. Though Arnold was initially apprehensive and ill at ease, the encounter of these old opponents was courteous and good tempered; they talked of non-controversial subjects such as North African myths. Newman reminded Arnold that they had in fact met once before, when he had been one of Arnold’s oral examiners for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity; Arnold had not identified him on that occasion, believing he was Edward Pusey, another leading Tractarian.

On the evening of the first of August, 1996, the Dominican Bishop of Oran in Algeria, Pierre Claverie, was murdered by a bomb placed in a side-road near his house. He had been warned many times about the danger of remaining in the country, especially since an underground group of Muslim terrorists had begun deliberately targeting people like himself. But he chose to stay. In the days after his death, against the wall near the place where he and his driver had been blown up, the local people placed flowers and small written tributes in his memory. Among them was a card from a young Algerian woman called Yasmina. On the card she wrote: “Ce soir, mon Pére, je n’ai pas de paroles. Mais j’ai des larmes et de l’espoir”. (“This evening, Father, I have no words. But I have tears and hope.”) Because these words are both heart-broken and hope-filled, I can think of no words more fitting to use as a title for this paper on martyrdom. “I Have Tears and Hope": Martyrdom in the Twentieth Century.

I say “tears”, first, because looking back over the last one hundred years, one soon comes to realize that perhaps no other century in history has witnessed the death and martyrdom of so many people, or has seen so much systematic and deliberate torture of the innocent. And, added to the usual tragic circumstances associated with martyrdom, a vast number of people in the 20th century, found themselves caught up helplessly between the two great opposing ideologies of Fascism and Communism.

I was born in Scotland in 1952, so that I belong to the very last generation of those who personally experienced preconciliar Catholicism. The saints played an important role in the spirituality in which we were brought up. Some were Scottish saints, such as Columba the missionary (+597) and Margaret the queen (+1093); but the Scottish church under Pius XII and John XXIII was not encouraged to be too Scottish. We were proud of being an outpost of the international church, and our spirituality was to be that of the universal church. This meant that most of the stories we heard concerned persons whose veneration was officially approved by Rome. Some were to be admired (great missionaries and martyrs, but also still living persons such as the stigmatised Padre Pio), while others were consciously presented as models to be imitated. Maria Goretti (1890-1902) belonged to this second group.

Churches and chapels were built in her honour, pious associations were founded. We heard about her in sermons and in religious instruction in school. Pamphlets with her biography could be bought for a few pence. Holy pictures in our prayer-books reminded us of her. Indeed, her face was very familiar to us—in classrooms, in churches, sometimes in our own bedrooms. What kind of image was this?

Against the background of an Italian landscape, one saw the radiant face of a beautiful girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old. A narrow halo encircled her head. She looked up to heaven with a smile. Sometimes she carried red roses as a symbol of her love for Jesus, sometimes there were snakes at her feet as a symbol of her struggle against the devil.