How Fortunate the Man With None Quiz

Answer: Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna

Following restoration work on London's Westminster Abbey in the late 1990s, ten statues were commissioned to fill niches above the Great West Door that had stood empty since the 15th century. The statues depict ten martyrs from a variety of Christian faiths around the world who all died during the 20th century, probably as a result of oppression, persecution, or because of their beliefs. They were carved from limestone by four different sculptors (Tim Crawley, Neil Simmons, John Roberts and Andrew Tanser) and unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998.

The Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna was born Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine in 1864 and was a granddaughter of Great Britain's Queen Victoria. She became a member of the Russian royal family when she married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich - a younger brother of Tsar Alexander III - in 1884. Her younger sister married her husband's nephew Tsar Nicholas II ten years later. After her husband was assassinated in 1905, Elizabeth gradually adopted a more simple lifestyle, before founding and joining her own convent in 1909. However, this religious lifestyle did not save her when the Bolsheviks arrested and then murdered various Russian royals - including Tsar Nicholas II - at Yekaterinburg following the October Revolution in 1917. Elizabeth and several relatives (along with another nun from her convent) were transported to the town of Alapaevsk (located near Yekaterinburg), thrown down a mine shaft and left there to die.

Answer: Manche Masemola

Manche Masemola was a member of the Pedi people of the Transvaal region of South Africa, the majority of whom were deeply suspicious of the Christian missionaries who had turned up in their country and begun the process of promoting a new religion to them.

She developed an interest in Christianity and began attending lessons at the local mission with the intention of being baptised into her new faith. However, her parents disapproved and when she defied them in order to continue her studies they killed her and buried her body in a remote spot. Later her burial site became a site of pilgrimage for local Christians, and Masemola was declared a martyr by the Church of the Province of South Africa in 1975.

Answer: Maximilian Kolbe

Maximilian Kolbe joined the Conventual Franciscans in 1907 and took his final vows with them in 1914 at the age of 18. The order formed part of the Catholic Order of Friars Minor. He was then ordained as a priest in 1918 and was posted to the Polish city of Krakow to teach at its seminary before spending several years in the Far East, where he founded several monasteries.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he was living at a monastery in Niepokalanow in Poland and was one of several monks arrested by the Nazis.

Although he was initially released, by 1941 the monks from Niepokalanow had been interned and transported to the notorious death camp, Auschwitz. Kolbe died at Auschwitz after stepping forward to take another prisoner's place when guards selected ten of them to be starved to death in punishment for an escape from the camp.

He was declared a saint after his canonisation by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

Answer: Lucian Tapiedi

The 'New Guinea Martyrs' were a group of Anglican church workers (clergy, missionaries and teachers) who were killed when Japan invaded what is now Papua New Guinea in January 1942. While many of the group were killed directly by Japanese forces, Lucian Tapiedi, a Papuan native and one of the Anglican teachers, escaped to a local village (along with some of his colleagues) but suffered the same fate there.

The village belonged to the Orokaiva people and Tapiedi's killer was later identified as a villager named Hivijapa. Tapiedi was just one of over 300 Christian workers who died as a result of the Japanese invasion. Hivijapa later converted to Christianity and took the name Hivijapa Lucian in honour of the man who he had killed.

Answer: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was ordained in Berlin in 1931 at the age of 25. Just two years later he came to prominence as an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime in Germany and opponent of the Nazis' growing influence in the church. He was an important founder member of the Confessing Church, which was set up with the aim of maintaining the traditions of the Protestant church in Germany and providing an alternative to the German Christian movement that supported Nazi ideology. Bonhoeffer spent the later years of the 1930s in Britain and the USA but returned to Germany in 1941 after stating that "I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people". Bonhoeffer became involved with the German resistance and joined the military intelligence unit known as the Abwehr, which was involved in several plots against Hitler. Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Nazis in 1943 and, despite being behind bars, he was later charged with being involved in the conspiracy behind Claus von Stauffenberg's failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20th, 1944.

He was executed at the Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1945.

Answer: Esther John

Qamar Zia was born in India in 1929 and emigrated to the newly formed Pakistan in 1947. She came from a Muslim family but attended a Christian school and became deeply interested in the religion. However, her family did not support her decision to embrace Christianity and she eventually ran away from home and adopted the name of Esther John.

She worked in both an orphanage and a mission hospital before deciding to train to be a teacher. After studying at the United Bible Training Centre in Gujranwala she moved to Chichawatni in 1960 and spent a significant portion of her time travelling around the neighbouring villages in order to both educate women and speak about Christianity. Just a year later she was found dead in her home as the victim of a brutal murder.

Her killer or killers were never identified.

Answer: Martin Luther King Jr.

When James Earl Ray shot dead Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th, 1968 he cut short the life of one of the most important and recognisable figures of the American Civil Rights movement. King is particularly remembered for his 'I Have A Dream' speech in which he set out his desire for a future where "children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." In addition to his noted campaign work, King was also pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and it was from his office in that building that he organised the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Answer: Wang Zhiming

The Cultural Revolution is the term used to describe a range of policies instituted by the Chinese leader Mao Zedong (otherwise known as Chairman Mao) in the late 1960s and early 1970s to replace traditional culture with Communist ideology. In practice it meant widespread violence; the imprisonment, torture and execution of political rivals and non-Communists throughout all levels of society; forced relocation of large groups of the population; and the destruction of historical, cultural and religious sites. Wang Zhiming was a pastor in Wuding County in China's Yunnan province, which had a Christian population of several thousand who, during this period, were forced to hide their religion and only meet secretly. Several Christian leaders from the area were arrested and interned, including Wang Zhiming in 1969.

He was executed four years later in front of a massive crowd of over 10,000 people.

Answer: Janani Luwum

Janani Luwum was elected as Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire in 1974 and became known for taking the stance that the Church should not condone or accept the violence and intimidation that characterised Idi Amin's rule over Uganda. In February 1977 Luwum personally delivered a written protest against government tactics - which included kidnapping and murder - to Idi Amin.

A few days later, Luwum was accused of treason, arrested and then died in custody. While Amin's government announced that he had been killed in a car crash, Luwum's bullet-ridden body told a different story.

The date of his death - February 17th - is celebrated as a Lesser Festival by the Anglican church.

Answer: Oscar Romero

In the 1970s, Archbishop Oscar Romero was a prominent voice for the poor of El Salvador and an active monitor of human rights abuses in the country. In 1979 he visited the Vatican to deliver a dossier of evidence of such atrocities to Pope John Paul II. Shortly afterwards a revolutionary coup replaced the government and the dangerous political climate of the time, particularly for members of the church, was highlighted by the murder of several Catholic priests around the country.

However, the world really took note when Romero himself was assassinated while conducting a mass at his local chapel on March 24th, 1980.

His death is often cited as the first major event of a civil war that lasted from 1979/80 until 1992. Romero was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 2015.