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Japanese The 21 martyrs of Libya were Christian migrant workers killed for their faith. Twenty were Coptic Orthodox Christians from Egypt, thirteen of them from one village, al-Our; the twenty-first, Matthew Ayariga, came by most accounts from Ghana. The Islamic State group in Libya killed them on a beach at Sirte in February 2015. They died calling on Jesus.
Who were the 21 martyrs of Libya?
They were labourers who had gone to Libya for work. Pope Francis described them in 2021 as men who “had gone to work abroad to support their families: ordinary men, fathers of families.” The twenty Egyptians came from the district of Samalout in Minya province, about 250 kilometres south of Cairo, and thirteen of them came from the village of al-Our.
Several were young men. Bishoy and Samuel Astafanous Kamel were brothers, aged 25 and 23. Gerges Samir Megally was 24 and engaged, and his father says he planned to marry in August 2015. Luka Nagaty Anis was 27, a husband and father. Essam Baddar Samir had left for Libya in July 2013, when he was 24.
The names below follow the list the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles published on 24 February 2015 “for use in prayers and publications.” The names are transliterated from Arabic, so their spelling varies from one source to the next, and lists published in the first days after the killings differ from this one. The diocese spells the last name “Mathew Ayairga”; it is given here in its usual spelling.
- Milad Makeen Zaky
- Abanub Ayad Atiya
- Maged Soliman Shehata
- Youssef Shukry Younan
- Kirollos Boshra Fawzy
- Bishoy Astafanous Kamel
- Samuel Astafanous Kamel
- Malak Ibrahim Sinyout
- Tawadros Youssef Tawadros
- Gerges Milad Sinyout
- Mina Fayez Aziz
- Hany Abdel Mesih Salib
- Samuel Alham Wilson
- Ezzat Boshra Naseef
- Luka Nagaty Anis
- Gaber Mounir Adly
- Essam Baddar Samir
- Malak Farag Abrahim
- Sameh Salah Farouk
- Gerges Samir Megally
- Matthew Ayariga (listed as from Ghana)
How were they captured in Sirte?
The Egyptians were taken in two raids in Sirte, a city on the Libyan coast. By the account of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, written that January, the first came on 31 December 2014, when militants stopped a microbus carrying Egyptians and took seven Christians from it at gunpoint. Open Doors says Essam Baddar Samir and six others were taken in December while trying to get home to Minya, which fits this first raid. Four days later, on 3 January 2015, masked men raided an apartment building where Muslim and Christian Egyptians lived together. They “had a list of the Christian residents’ names,” took thirteen Copts and left the Muslim residents unharmed.
On 12 January an affiliate of the Islamic State in Libya put out a statement claiming it had captured 21 Christians, with photographs of the captives. Accounts do not say when or where Matthew Ayariga was taken.
How did they die?
The Islamic State group in Libya beheaded the men on the shore at Sirte and released a video of the killing on 15 February 2015. The Church of England’s official biography of the martyrs dates their deaths “on or about 15 February 2015,” and 15 February is the day the churches keep. The same biography says they “refused to renounce Christ despite the threat of death” and were “targeted specifically for their Christian identity.” Pope Francis said the next day: “They were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians.”
What were their last words?
The accounts agree that the men called on Jesus as they died. All of them rest on the killers’ own video and on those who watched it: Vatican Radio reported that some of the men “were seen mouthing the words ‘Lord Jesus Christ’” in it, and Crux wrote that they “were said to be chanting Christian hymns and praying to Jesus.” The exact words differ from one report to another. The Church of England says they “died with the words ‘O my Lord Jesus’ on their lips.” Writing for Watani, Nader Shukry, a board member of the martyrs’ church at al-Our, reported that each man’s last words were “a quiet ‘Oh my Lord Jesus’, or ‘Lord, have mercy on me’.” Anba Antonios Aziz Mina, a Coptic Catholic bishop, said that “the victims repeated ‘Lord Jesus Christ’. The name of Jesus was the last word on their lips.” Speaking in Spanish the day after the video appeared, Pope Francis put it this way: “Their only words were: ‘Jesus, help me!’”
Luka Nagaty Anis’s father made himself watch the video to learn whether his son had held firm. “I heard his voice, calling on the name of Jesus,” he told Open Doors ten years later. “That was his voice. I recognised him. And I was relieved. He was faithful.”
Who was Matthew Ayariga?
He was the one man of the twenty-one who was not Egyptian, and the accounts of him do not agree. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales says that “it is believed” he was “born in Ghana, or possibly Chad, in the late 80s or early 90s,” and that he had come to Sirte looking for construction work. It calls his presence among the Copts “something of a mystery” and reports that when his captors questioned him, he said, “their God is my God.” Open Doors says he “had not been a Christian when he first met the 20 Copts” and chose to follow Christ after seeing their faith “in the face of death,” and that he was baptised and given the name Matthew. The Catholic missionary news agency Fides calls him “the Ghanaian Catholic”; the bishops of England and Wales say only that “Some speculate that he was a Catholic.” None of these accounts names a witness.
What is certain is that he died with them, and that the Copts of al-Our count him as one of their own. Egyptians call him Matthew the African. In 2026 the Diocese of Fort Worth in Texas established the first parish named for him, Saint Matthew Ayariga Catholic Church in Arlington, a parish for Ghanaian Catholics.
How did their families respond?
They forgave the killers, and some of them said so in public within two days. On 17 February 2015 Beshir Kamel, the brother of Bishoy and Samuel, telephoned a live worship programme on the Christian satellite channel SAT-7 ARABIC. He called his brothers “a badge of honour to Christianity” and said that “the Bible told us to love our enemies and bless those who curse us.” He was recalling the words of Jesus: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27–28).
Asked about forgiving the killers, Beshir told how his mother would react if she met one of them. She would ask him into her house “and ask God to open his eyes because he was the reason [her sons] entered the kingdom of heaven.” Invited to pray for the killers on air, he began, “Dear God, please open their eyes to be saved.” He also thanked them for leaving the men’s confession of Christ in their video, because, he said, it had strengthened his own faith. In the same call he said that the long weeks without news had made the Egyptian government’s air strikes a justified response for the families, and that had the men been killed on the day they were taken, the families would not have asked for retaliation.
Ten years later, Open Doors partners visited some of the families, and Open Doors reported that “every family has chosen to forgive the persecutors.” Samir, the father of Gerges Samir Megally, said: “I have forgiven the militants who killed my son. They did not know what they were doing.” His words echo the prayer of Jesus from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). “Why shouldn’t I forgive?” Samir went on. “The Lord forgives us every second, and He forgave His own persecutors.” Other fathers spoke of honour and joy. “It is an honor for me,” the father of Youssef Shukry Younan told Crux, and the father of Mina Fayez Aziz said, “It is a joy for me.”
When did the Coptic Orthodox Church declare them saints?
On 21 February 2015, six days after the video appeared, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria announced that the twenty-one would be entered in the Synaxarium, the Coptic Church’s book of saints. Vatican Radio described the step as “equivalent to canonization in the Latin Church.” The Coptic Church commemorates them on 8 Amshir in its own calendar, which falls on 15 February, “the same day as the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple,” as the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles noted that day. The Coptic Church has also named 15 February the Feast of Modern-Day Martyrs, on which it remembers, alongside the twenty-one, other Copts who have died for their faith in this century.
Copts also ask for their prayers. “We ask for their prayers often,” Pope Tawadros said in Rome in 2023, “and we believe they continue to offer us a great blessing.”
Why do Catholics and Anglicans also honour them?
Pope Francis and the Roman Martyrology
From the start, Pope Francis spoke of the twenty-one as belonging to every church. “The martyrs belong to all Christians,” he said on 16 February 2015, and he called their shared witness “the ecumenism of blood.” In 2021 he sent a video message to an online commemoration in which Pope Tawadros and Justin Welby, then Archbishop of Canterbury, took part, and called the men “our Saints, Saints of all Christians.”
On 11 May 2023 Pope Tawadros visited Rome to mark fifty years since the first meeting between a Coptic pope and a bishop of Rome, and he brought Pope Francis a relic of the martyrs. Francis quoted Jesus, “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), and said: “These martyrs were baptized not only in water and the Spirit, but also in blood, with a blood that is a seed of unity for all followers of Christ.” He then announced that, “with Your Holiness’ consent, these 21 martyrs will be included in the Roman Martyrology,” the Catholic Church’s official list of saints, “as a sign of the spiritual communion uniting our two Churches.” It was not the first time the Martyrology had taken in saints of another church: Vatican News notes that some Orthodox saints were added in 2001.
Pope Tawadros said the relics were given “so that they may be remembered in the martyrology of all the churches of the world,” and he borrowed a line from the Letter to the Hebrews for them: that “we too” are “surrounded by such a multitude of witnesses.” In the English Standard Version the verse reads: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). Hebrews offers that great cloud of witnesses as a reason to keep running, and Pope Tawadros counted the twenty-one among them.
The Catholic Church first kept their feast on 15 February 2024, with an ecumenical prayer in St Peter’s Basilica. Cardinal Kurt Koch, who led it, said that “the communion of martyrs undoubtedly speaks more eloquently than the divisions that still divide us today.”
The Church of England’s calendar
On 12 July 2026 the General Synod of the Church of England, meeting in York, approved “an annual commemoration for the ’21 Martyrs of Libya’” in its liturgical calendar. The Synod approved it together with a new Festival of Creation in Christ, in one counted vote on both: 29 to 0 in the House of Bishops, 101 to 0 in the House of Clergy, and 120 to 1 in the House of Laity, with one lay abstention. The church says it was “the first time that the liturgical calendar has been altered since 2010.” Closing the debate, Bishop Michael Ipgrave, who chairs the Liturgical Commission, said the day would fix “our gaze on a beach in Libya where the same Lord was confessed by men whose worldly power was small but whose witness has become immense.”
The Liturgical Commission’s circular of 16 July explains how the day is kept. The martyrs “will be remembered on 15 February as a Commemoration in the Common Worship Calendar,” and will appear in later printings of the calendar and lectionary. A Commemoration is the calendar’s simplest kind of observance: it has no collect or readings of its own and is kept “by a mention in prayers of intercession and thanksgiving.” Where the martyrs have local significance, or where there is “an established celebration in the wider church,” the day may instead be kept as a Lesser Festival, with the prayers and readings for martyrs and red as the liturgical colour. The first 15 February after the vote falls in 2027.
So the same twenty-one names now stand on the same date in the calendars of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church and the Church of England, churches that do not yet share one altar.
Where are the 21 martyrs buried?
In September 2017 Libyan authorities found the men’s bodies in a grave on the coast near Sirte, and DNA tests identified each of them. On the evening of 14 May 2018 the remains of the twenty Egyptians were flown from Misrata to Cairo, where Pope Tawadros met them at the airport while church and monastery bells rang across Egypt. They were taken to al-Our and laid in a shrine in the new Church of the Martyrs of Faith and the Nation, built in their memory and consecrated that February.
Matthew Ayariga’s body was not with them. No one had claimed it, and in 2019 the Coptic diocese of Samalout asked the Libyan authorities to send it to al-Our so that he could lie with the others. His remains reached the church in the autumn of 2020. Anba Pavnotios, the Coptic metropolitan of Samalout, anointed the box that held them with sweet spices, as is the Coptic custom, and covered it in red velvet with his name embroidered in gold thread. The families of the Egyptian martyrs came to the celebration. The mother of Bishoy and Samuel said: “Our joy is now complete.”
