The church kept losing members

They would be there one Sunday and then never seen again.

It was a very serious situation.

But the church survived.

Sometimes over a hundred parishioners would disappear in a single week.

But the church endured.

Those who were left would seek out their missing brothers and sisters, retrieving their bodies from the government authorities who had arrested and killed them and giving them a Christian burial.

And the church of the city of Rome, remembering its brothers and sisters who died for their faith in Jesus Christ, would flourish.

Today the universal Church celebrates the memory of the first martyrs of Rome.