Can Charlie Kirk be proclaimed a martyr? A Catholic expert weighs in

Religious liberty journalist Marco Respinti has opened a question now reverberating among Christians: Can Charlie Kirk be recognized as a martyr by the Catholic Church even though he was not Catholic?

To explore it, Respinti spoke with Father Fabio Arduino, a priest of the Diocese of Massa Carrara-Pontremoli, Italy, educated at the Theological Faculty of Central Italy and the Pontifical Salesian University, and an expert on martyrdom and Christian witness.

Fr. Arduino said the Church is reflecting on cases like this very carefully, noting that some theologians speak about a developing idea of martyrdom in a broader sense for Christians who die for their faith outside Catholic communion.

The key, he says, is the intention of the killers, not the victim’s denomination.

“Persecutors do not ask to which Christian confession their victims belong: they simply hate their faith,” he said.

Recognition, he added, would not amount to endorsing every belief the person held that differs from Catholic teaching. The lens remains the persecutor’s motive — hatred of the faith — and the victim’s faithful living of the Gospel.

“What determines martyrdom is the motive and the goal of the persecutors: they hate the faith of the victim and, consequently, his faithful following of the Gospel in the daily gestures of life,” he said. “A Christian is one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Messiah, who died and rose again for the salvation of every human being. That alone is sufficient to be a Christian — and it is sufficient also for the persecutors.”

Fr. Arduino cited precedents across Christian traditions, noting that Pope Saint John Paul II included the Russian Orthodox martyr Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna in the Vatican’s Redemptoris Mater Chapel.

More recently, he noted, Pope Francis announced in 2023 that the 21 Coptic Christians murdered by ISIS in Libya in 2015 would be entered in the Roman Martyrology as a sign of communion with the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Fr. Arduino linked these threads to what recent popes call an “ecumenism of blood,” a theme highlighting unity forged when Christians of different backgrounds give their lives for Christ.

“The witness of their martyrdom is more eloquent than any word: unity comes from the Cross of the Lord,” he said. 

Fr. Arduino said the path toward recognizing someone as a martyr — and potentially opening a cause for beatification — begins with concrete action by the faithful, starting with having Masses offered for the person’s repose.

If more seems warranted, the next step is local and grassroots. A community can approach Church authorities to begin a cause by appointing a postulator in the diocese to examine whether the conditions for beatification are present.

Even without a formal cause, devotional life often moves forward on its own, according to Fr. Arduino. Prayer cards may circulate asking for recognition of a person’s sanctity, typically bearing an episcopal imprimatur, a bishop’s permission to publish.

Popular devotion, he observes, tends to endure. As a historical example, he points to France, where Masses are offered every January 21 — the date of King Louis XVI’s 1793 execution — for a ruler whom Pope Pius VI described as a martyr to Jacobin anti-Christian violence.

He added that, as Pope Pius VI showed in that instance, the Church’s longstanding principles hold that martyrdom is judged by the cause — namely, hatred of the Christian faith — rather than the outward form of execution or the official rationale given.  

As for how the Church proceeds today, Fr. Arduino pointed to the pope’s guidance. 

“It is always the Pope who indicates the path by which, today in the Catholic Church, recognition of the martyrs of our time proceeds: The Commission of New Martyrs, at the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, is carrying out this task in collaboration with the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity,” he said. 

Whether Kirk could be recognized as a martyr, he reiterated, will depend on proof of motive — specifically whether the killing occurred “out of hatred for the Christian faith.”