April 18, 246
Cyprian is baptized in Carthage on Easter eve. He will become a bishop and leading theologian, renowned for writing the treatise On the Unity of the Catholic Church.
April 18, 1506
Pope Julius II lays the foundation stone of the second building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
April 18, 1521
Luther makes his bold declaration, “Here I stand!” at a second hearing before emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms.
April 18, 1587
Death in London of John Foxe, author of The Actes and Monuments of the Church (first published in 1563), better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
April 18, 1753
Sophronius is consecrated Bishop of Irkutsk and Nerchinsk. Years earlier, at being made a monk, he had received a vision saying, “When you become bishop, build a church dedicated to all saints”—which he did. He will be considered an Orthodox saint.
April 18, 1784
Thomas Charles’s career as a Church of England clergyman ends when he is dismissed as curate of Llanymawddwy because of his support of Methodists. He will be influential in establishing Welsh schools and the British and Foreign Bible Society.
April 18, 1894
Nine hundred Syrian Sunday-school children assemble in Beirut to witness the unveiling of a column dedicated to female education which Christian missionary Sarah Huntington Smith had inaugurated on that site fifty-nine years earlier. The children represent Muslims, Druzes, Jews, Maronites, Catholics, Greeks, Armenians, and Protestants. Among the speakers is Alice Bisney, a daughter of Smith’s first student.
April 18, 1905
Eleven Catholics are murdered for their faith in Yanjing, Tibet. Their killers read a message from the Dalai Lama threatening death to Christian converts who will not return to Buddhism.
April 18, 1909
Mattiya Leonard Kamungu becomes the first Anglican priest of the Chewa people in the diocese of Nyasaland. He will be misunderstood by both Europeans and his own people as he tries to walk a line between European paternalism and African expectations. He dies in 1913, possibly poisoned, and will be considered a martyr.
April 18, 1929
Death in Hankow, China, of Eduard L. Arndt, pioneer Lutheran missionary.
April 18, 1989
Chinese Communist forces attack Catholic Christians at Youtong, beating hundreds, some so severely they are left unconscious. They knock out the eyes of a nun, and take other Christians into captivity. Pei Guoxin and Dong Zhouxiao will be beaten to death in detention.
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