Roman Martyrology 2004 Complete English Translation from the Original Latin Volume I: Volume I of II

I am very pleased to present the first complete English translation of the 2004 Roman Martyrology from the original Latin promulgated nearly a quarter century ago by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in February of 2001 under the authority of Pope John Paul II, and printed in 2004 (by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana).Such a document, finally embracing the last seventy years of a 2000-year history, is too precious a patrimony to leave the children of Holy Mother Church bereft of, with no accessibility to its imponderable depths, no glimpse into the blinding heights to which the martyrs’ love inexorably brought them through immeasurable pain. If their story is no longer compelling, no longer worth telling; if it has ceased to be urgent, then the Communion of Saints has been broken and we peer back through indecipherable runes to a hallowed past we no longer comprehend.This translation is not merely one of names and dates only, but of the known details that culminated in their martyrdom. These details are both chilling and inspiring. They reveal, at one and the same time, the heights of sanctity to which men and women can rise — and the depths of depravity and evil into which they can descend. Sometimes the details are sparse and we must respect what God has veiled of their suffering.For me, however, and for others in the Anglosphere who have been nourished, as it were, on the blood of the Martyrs as Tertullian might say, in our long and often painful journey to Christ, their story is in some measure inescapably our own. Their witness has sustained us in dark moments; we may even dare say that in studying them we have made many intercessors ... and even friends.This translation, carefully compared with and curated through the original Latin text beginning December 2024, is carefully and extensively indexed to assist reader and scholar alike in readily locating any saint or martyr contained in the martyrology.Geoffrey K. Mondello, Editor Boston Catholic Journal Read more