For the fifth consecutive year, the place most affected, with an extremely elevated number of pastoral care workers killed is LATIN AMERICA, especially in Colombia.

The pastoral care workers who died violently in 2013 are: 19 priests, one  religious sister, two lay persons. In America: 15 priests (7 in Colombia, 4 in Mexico, one in Brazil, one in Venezuela, one in Panama, one  in Haiti) were killed; in Africa: one priest was killed in Tanzania, one religious sister in Madagascar, one lay person in Nigeria were killed; in Asia one  priest in India and one in Syria were killed; in the Philippines one lay person was killed; in Europe a priest was killed in Italy.

In 2013 the beatification process of the six Italian missionary Sisters of the Poor of Bergamo was opened. They died in Congo in 1995 after having contracted the Ebola virus in order not to leave the population without health care. They have been defined as "martyrs of love". 

The  diocesan phase of the beatification process of Luisa Mistrali Guidotti, has been completed. Guidotti,  a member of the Women's Medical Missionary Association was killed in 1979 in the then Rhodesia while accompanying a pregnant woman to the hospital. The cause of beatification of Father Mario Vergara, a missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), and the lay catechist Isidore Ngei Ko Lat, killed for their  faith in Myanmar in 1950 was opened.

 On April 25 the beatification of Father Pino Puglisi was celebrated: "his gentleness and his unceasing missionary work, clashed with that of the mafia, that hindered his pastoral action with intimidation , threats and beatings, to the point of killing him, in hatred of faith" wrote the Bishops of Sicily.

There is still much concern regarding the fate of many other pastoral care workers who have been kidnapped or disappeared, of whom there has been no news, such as the three Congolese Augustinian priests of the Assumption, kidnapped in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo in October 2012, and a Colombian priest who has disappeared for months. While the terrible conflict that has plunged Syria in blood for three years does not spare the Christians: we have not had any news of the Italian Jesuit Fr. Paul Dall'Oglio for a long time, of the two metropolitan Bishops of Aleppo - the Greek Orthodox Boulos al-Yazigi and the Syrian Orthodox Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, of the Orthodox nuns of the monastery of Santa Tecla. Fr. Georges Vandenbeusch, the French priest  of Fidei Donum, who was kidnapped on November 13 in his parish home in Nguetchewe, Cameroon,  has just been released.

The majority of the pastoral care workers in 2013 were killed in attempted robbery, and in some cases after attacking them violently. It is  sign of the climate of moral decline, economic and cultural poverty, which generates violence and disregard for human life. They lived in these human and social contexts, carrying out the mission of proclaiming the Gospel message without making sensational acts, but by witnessing their faith in the humility of daily life.

As pointed out by the Holy Father, "in 2,000 years, a vast host of men and women have sacrificed their lives to remain faithful to Jesus Christ and his Gospel" (Angelus, 23 June 2013). 

The provisional list compiled annually by Fides, must therefore be added to the long list of many of whom there may never be news, who in every corner of the world suffer and even pay with their lives for their faith in Christ. The Pope urged: "let us think about our many Christian brothers and sisters who are suffering persecution for their faith. There are so many. Perhaps more now than in past centuries. Jesus is with them. We too are united to them with our prayers and our love; we admire their courage and their witness. They are our brothers and sisters who, in many parts of the world, are suffering for their faithfulness to Jesus Christ" (Pope Francis, Angelus, 17 November 2013).