Triumphant Martyred Bishops and Militant Bishops

The Communion of Saints is one of the most beautiful doctrines of the Catholic Church: the Church is a community that spreads across time and space. One way of describing it is that there is the Church Militant on earth now, actively working and fighting to spread the Gospel; there is also the Church Suffering, the poor souls in Purgatory who are being prepared to enter Heaven; finally, there is the Church Triumphant, those happy souls in Heaven who pray and intercede for us. And that's the method of communication we have in this communion: prayer. We the living pray for the poor souls in Purgatory, asking God to speed their union with Him; the poor souls can pray for us, but they can't pray for themselves; we also pray, asking the saints in Heaven to intercede for us--and they can pray for the poor souls in Purgatory too. It's the network of prayer to and worship of the Holy Trinity, to the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes we use certain forms of prayer to ask for intercession. One of our Wichita diocesan priests has composed and published--**for private use only**--a litany of Martyred Catholic Bishops to intercede for living Catholic bishops. He's titled it "Litany to the Bishop Martyrs for the Bishops of the Church Militant." You may find it on Father Thomas Hoisington's website, Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy, here. The prayer at the end of the Litany is:

O God our Providential Father, look upon the Bishops of your Church on earth in union with the Supreme Pontiff, and increase in them the virtue of fortitude. Through the intercession of those Holy Shepherds who have already spilt their blood in witness of the Gospel, grant, if your shepherds be struck or struck down, that the sheep may not scatter, but that they may be one, in faith and in the Truth, Who is Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

You might notice that two of the bishops were martyred in England: St. John Fisher and St. Thomas a Becket. St. Boniface was from England (his birth name was Winfred) but he was martyred in Germany.

Pope John Paul II, The Saint and His Saints

Today is the Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II, the pope of my adulthood, whose encyclicals and books I've read, and whose life and death I've loved. He is famous for bringing down Communism in Poland, for urging us to embrace the Culture of Life, and for beatifying and canonizing many saints. Some thought he canonized too many, but in this article from 2006, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, then the prefect of the Congregation for Sainthood Causes, gave Pope St. John Paul II's reasons for canonizing so many saints:

The first reason the Pope gave was that he, by beatifying so many Servants of God, did no more than implement the Second Vatican Council, which vigorously reaffirmed that holiness is the essential note of the Church; that the Church is holy: one, holy, catholic, apostolic. 

John Paul II also said that if the Church of Christ is not holy, it isn't the Church of Christ, the true Church of Christ, the one he desired and founded to continue his mission throughout the centuries. 

Therefore, John Paul II said, holiness is what is most important in the Church, according to the Second Vatican Council. Then no one should be surprised by the fact that the Pope wished to propose so many models of holiness to Christians, to the People of God. 

The second reason is the extraordinary ecumenical importance of holiness. 

In "Novo Millennio Ineunte," the Pope said that the holiness of the saints, blessed and martyrs is perhaps the most convincing ecumenism, these are his words, because holiness, he said with even stronger words, has its ultimate foundation in Christ, in whom the Church is not divided. 

Therefore, the ecumenism we all want calls for many saints, so that the convincing ecumenism of holiness is placed in the candelabrum of the holiness of the Church. 

The Pope's third reason was that "the saints and blessed manifest the charity of a local Church," that is, today, the Holy Father said, local Churches are far more numerous than in the last 10 centuries. 

Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that there are also more saints, more blessed who express and manifest the holiness of these increased local Churches. 

The Vatican website has a list of all the saints he canonized and the Bunsons (Matthew and Margaret) wrote a book about those saints, published in 2007.