Sirte
City on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. Twenty-one Christian workers were kidnapped here in December 2014 and January 2015 and killed on a beach in the western part of the city in February 2015.
The Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity records that the twenty-one men commemorated as the martyrs of Libya were kidnapped in the city of Sirte in December 2014 and January 2015, and were beheaded on a beach in the western part of the city on 15 February 2015; their remains were found in a mass grave on the Libyan coast in 2017 (Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, Memorial of the 21 Coptic Martyrs of Libya (2024), hagiographical note, p. 3). See the Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya.
What happened here
- 15 February 2015, firm dateThe Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya
In February 2015 twenty-one Christian workers, twenty Egyptian Copts and one man from Ghana, are beheaded on the coast of Libya. The Coptic Orthodox Church enters them in its Synaxarium within a week, and in 2023 Pope Francis announces their inclusion in the Roman Martyrology.