But he’s not referring just to martyrs of previous eras.

“This century now drawing to a close,” he wrote, “has known very many martyrs, especially because of Nazism, Communism and racial or tribal conflicts. People from every sector of society have suffered for their faith, paying with their blood for their fidelity to Christ and the Church, or courageously facing interminable years of imprisonment and privations of every kind because they refused to yield to an ideology which had become a pitiless dictatorial regime.

“From the psychological point of view, martyrdom is the most eloquent proof of the truth of the faith, for faith can give a human face even to the most violent of deaths and show its beauty even in the midst of the most atrocious persecutions.”

Yet for many years, the martyrs’ “human face” remained hidden, despite the advent of instant communication. Those suffering oppression, torture and murder for proclaiming Jesus are apparently not newsworthy.

But thanks in large part to Nina Shea, Americans are finally hearing about persecuted Christians. An international human rights attorney for 20 years, the 45 year-old mother of three has devoted the last dozen years to exposing religious persecution.

“I was basically a lapsed Catholic when I got into this business twelve years ago,” Shea says. “I had a secular humanist interest in this issue. I thought religious persecution was unfair.”

Today she heads the Center for Religious Freedom, part of Washington, D.C.-based Freedom House, America’s oldest human rights group. As the center’s director, she has participated in fact-finding missions throughout the world, where she saw firsthand the suffering Body of Christ. She was moved by the great faith of those she met in regions ripe with religious persecution - places like Sudan, China, Vietnam, Pakistan and India.

“I really had a spiritual awakening in 1993,” she says.

That year, her father was dying and her youngest child was born. Grappling with life and death questions, she returned to Catholicism to find the answers. But while her spiritual life was blossoming, she grew frustrated at the lack of attention paid to those punished for professing Christianity.

“It’s not missionaries being persecuted in large numbers,” Shea says. “It’s mostly black, brown and yellow Christians - mostly Catholics and Evangelicals.”

Shea’s book, In the Lion’s Den, chronicles Christian persecution, a topic that until three years ago seldom drew media attention. Shea says journalists find it hard to think of Christians as victims.

“They think of Christians as persecutors,” she says. “They think of Christians as bigots.”

Reporters have asked her, “Why should we help Christians? They don’t support a woman’s right to choose.”

Shea decided to take the initiative. In January 1996, she organized a conference with one hundred Christian religious leaders.

“I gave them the facts,” she says, “and they discussed among themselves what to do.” The movement has been building ever since, working to promote religious freedom, which Pope John Paul II has called “the most fundamental human freedom, that of practicing one’s faith openly, which for human beings is their reason for living.”

Last year, the Clinton administration agreed to make religious liberty a key foreign policy consideration. The Religious Freedom Act of 1998 requires the president to take action against countries that engage in systematic religious persecution. The act also established an independent, federal Commission on International Religious Liberty. Shea, as one of the commission’s ten members, will investigate religious persecution abroad and recommend policy.

One area the commission will undoubtedly investigate is the Sudan. Located in Northeastern Africa, the country is ruled by a radical Islamic regime.

“There’s a veritable genocide in Sudan,” Shea says. “It’s the world’s worst place, in terms of religious persecution. . . Catholics and others are being massacred and bombed. Refugee camps, feeding centers and hospitals were bombed more than 40 times last year.”

More people have died in southern Sudan than all of Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo combined, Shea notes, adding that it’s “unconscionable” that the U.S. is virtually ignoring the genocide. “We should have a policy regarding that,” she says.

But Shea is not content to merely offer ideas. She’s taking action.

“I’m spearheading a major campaign to get Christian college students to take up a protest against genocide in Sudan,” she says, similar to the anti-apartheid movement against South Africa.

More than 200 students, representing 60 campuses, attended a conference in Washington. They’ll start the campaign on Lincoln’s birthday. Just as our nation’s sixteenth president fought slavery, so these students hope to abolish the “enslavement of the Christian infidels” in Sudan, Shea says.

In addition, there are a number of things that can be done by all Christian faithful to help our persecuted brothers and sisters.

“Pray,” Shea says. “And during the Prayers of the Faithful at Mass, we need to pray for the persecuted Church as in the days of the Soviet Union. Also, use the rights of citizenship to press our government to take a stand. Write or e-mail Congress members. Urge them to take action. Use networks - church groups, schools - to let others know [about anti-Christian persecution]. Write letters to the editor; call talk-radio.”

The pope has said “the Church in every corner of the earth must remain anchored in the testimony of the martyrs and jealously guard their memory.” Thanks to Nina Shea, the testimony of the martyrs at the end of the second millennium will not pass unnoticed.

The Center for Religious Freedom can be contacted at: 202-296-5101. The address is: Freedom House, 1319 18 St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.