Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of Aid to the Church in Need International (ACN), reaffirmed the foundation’s commitment to supporting persecuted and suffering Christians during the annual pilgrimage for persecuted Christians held at Benedictine Einsiedeln Abbey, organized by ACN Switzerland.

Reflecting on the reality of religious persecution in today’s world, Cardinal Koch stressed that martyrdom is not merely a phenomenon of the past but remains a lived reality for countless Christians around the globe.

“Martyrdom truly belongs to the heart of Christianity. Today, there are more martyrs than in the first centuries of Church history,” he said.

The President of ACN International also emphasized that persecuted Christians offer a powerful witness to Christian unity today.

“Dictators do not distinguish between Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, or Protestants,” he said, recalling Pope Francis‘s expression, “the ecumenism of blood.” Said Cardinal Koch, “The blood that has been shed unites Christians beyond their divisions.”

“Christians are not persecuted because they belong to a particular Church, but because of their faith in Christ,” he added.

The West has made a fatal mistake in continuing to view Islamist terrorism as strictly a military phenomenon, when in fact jihadism has evolved into a cultural, digital and identity-based threat. Today, the so-called Islamic State does not need to conquer territories; it is enough for it to occupy our children’s screens. This dramatic warning is contained in a recent study by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), which describes the emergence of a virtual caliphate tailor-made for Gen Z.