Vatican:

Pope Francis will attend an ecumenical ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica to be held in connection with the celebration of the feast of the 21 Coptic martyrs who were martyred by ISIS in Libya, as reported by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. The ceremony will take place on February 15th.By including these martyrs in the Roman Martyrology in 2023, the Catholic and Coptic Orthodox Churches expressed their spiritual unity for the victims of the 2015 Islamic State executions.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the head of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, will preside over the ceremony, which will also have a Coptic choir attending. The Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Tawadros II, has offered the relics of the martyrs for veneration.

A documentary titled "The 21: The Power of Faith" will be screened at the Vatican Film Library after the ecumenical prayer. This film, made under the patronage of the Coptic Patriarch, documents the lives of the martyrs as they lived them out in the Egyptian town of Al Our in the south of Cairo.

Jihadists belonging to ISIS group executed 21 Christians in Libya in 2015. Among them were twenty Coptic Christians who had migrated to Libya as migrant workers. Matthew Ayariga, the twenty-first man, was a Ghanaian. However, he also accepted martyrdom by responding to the Islamic terrorists' questions by saying, "Their God is my God."

Reports of the beheadings quickly spread throughout the internet following a video published by the terrorist group. The video footage showed the martyrs just before their execution in which they were seen praying and invoking Jesus' name. Pope Tawadros II, head of the Coptic Church, canonized the victims soon after.