Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish Franciscan priest; Franz Jagerstatter a young Austrian farmer with a wife and three young daughters. Karl Leisner grew up in Germany in the years Hitler rose to power. Rupert Mayer had met Hitler in the political arena in 1919 and quickly realised that a German Catholic could never be a Nazi. Their lives were inextricably sucked into the tentacles of the evil men can do. Each refused to condone a wicked political system, so raising up the light of Christ crucified and risen in the total darkness. Pope John Paul II invites us never to forget these modern martyrs of our own time.