Hi Ann,

I’m in contact with some traditional Catholic converts in Iran. They have a small, but growing community through the work of some very holy priests. As you noted a couple of podcasts ago, Persians would be great Catholics. I can confirm! Things are not going well for them in Iran, though. Since the internet came back on, they are now confirming some of the worst information about mass killings and note that the danger to converts and non-Muslims is very high.

Protesters are being executed without even a show trial. People are getting picked up on the street for anything suspicious and ending up dead as “Mossad agents.” The regime is clearly scared and lashing out. They really need our prayers! Also, prayers for the military planners that seem to be finalizing attacks on Tehran. It would be quite easy for them to make things even worse if they make the wrong choices.

-B

St. Anastasius of Persia, pray for us.

From Wikipedia:

Anastasius was born in the city of Ray. He was the son of a magus named Bavi. He was a soldier in the army of Khosrow II (r. 590–628) and participated in the capture of the True Cross in Jerusalem, which was carried to the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon.
The occasion prompted him to ask for information about the Christian religion. He then experienced a conversion of faith, left the army, became a Christian, and afterwards a monk in Jerusalem. He was baptized by Modestus, receiving the Christian name Anastasius to honor the resurrection of Jesus Christ (“Anástasis” in Greek).

After seven years of monastic observance, he went to Caesarea, then subject to the Sasanians. There he interrupted and ridiculed the Zoroastrian priests for their religion, and was as a result arrested by the local marzban, taken prisoner, cruelly tortured to make him abjure, and finally carried down near the Euphrates, to a place called Barsaloe (or Bethsaloe according to the Bollandists), where his tortures were continued while at the same time the highest honors in the service of King Khosrow II as a magus were promised him if he would renounce Christianity.

Finally, after refusing to abjure, with seventy others, he was strangled to death and decapitated on January 22, 628.

His body, which was thrown to the dogs but left untouched by them, was carried from the place of his martyrdom to Palestine, then to Constantinople, and finally to Rome where the relics were venerated at the Tre Fontane Abbey.