Westminster Abbey- London, United Kingdom

Westminster Abbey’s western façade always had niches above the portal, but somehow they were never filled with statues. When I was second last in London (1996), the four niches left and right of the the Great Western Door already were showing allegoric figures of traditional virtues Mercy, Truth, Righteousness and Peace. But then the ten nices above the door were still empty, however there were plans to fill these remaining niches with statues as well. On July 9, 1998 they were finally unveiled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, H.M. The Queen and H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh.
No words can better describe the intention behind these ten statues than the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, who wrote on their website:
…not just to commemorate saintly or worthy figures from the past, but to proclaim a message of which too few people are aware: the twentieth century has been a century of Christian martyrdom. The cost of Christian witness, and the number of Christians willing to die for what they believed (alongside others of different religious faiths or none), has been greater in this century than in any previous period in the history of the church.
These ten statues are of individual martyrs; but they are intended to represent all those others who have died (and continue to die) in similar circumstances of oppression and persecution. They are drawn from every continent and many Christian denominations. They include victims of the struggle for human rights in North and South America, of the Soviet and Nazi persecutions in Europe, of religious prejudice and dictatorial rule in Africa, of fanaticism in the Indian subcontinent, of the brutalities of the Second World War in Asia and of the Cultural Revolution in China. In these and other similar circumstances during this most violent of centuries thousands of men and women have paid with their lives for their faith and their convictions. Those represented here have left their testimony to the ultimate cost of Christian witness and to its enduring significance.
(taken from Westminster Abbey website, see link below)
This is a wonderful idea in my opinion and it also shows the very much progressive and modern attitude of the Anglican Church (compared to Roman Catholic).

The stautues are the work of Tim Crawley, Neil Simmons, John Roberts and Andrew Tanser and show (from left to right):
Maximilian Kolbe, Polish priest who was executed by the deadly brainsick Nazi terror regime in Auschwitz on August 14, 1941,
Manche Masemola (photo 5), a girl from Transvaal who converted to Christian belief and was murdered by her own parents at the age of 15 on February 4, 1928,
Janani Luwum, archbishop of Uganda, who was killed by Idi Amin’s death squadron on February 12, 1977,
Elizabeth of Russia (photo 2), born princess of Hesse Darmstadt, sister of the last Tzarina Alexandra and married to grand duke Sergej Alexandrowich. After her husband was killed, she founded Orthodox monastery Martha-Maria and was murdered by Bolsheviks the night after the Tzar family was slaughtered, July 18, 1918,
Martin Luther King, the famous civil rights movement leader was killed in Memphis April 4, 1968,
Oscar Romero, archbishop of El Salvador was killed by the death squadrons during revolution on March 24, 1980,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (main photo), Polish Lutheranian pastor from Wroclaw was another victim of the deadly brainsick Nazi terror regime and executed on April 9, 1945,
Ester John, an Indian girl, was brutally murdered on February 2, 1060 by maybe her family for having converted to Christianity and for not obeying the force to marry a muslim husband,
Lucian Tapiedi (photo 4), a priest from Papua New Guinea who was killed by a member of Orokaiva tribe who cooperated with the Japanese during their invasion in July 1942,
Wang Zhiming (photo 3), priest of Christian belief who was executed by the deadly brainsick Mao terror regime during the cultoral revolution on December 29, 1973.

(I have created a travelogue with photos of the other statues including a photo of 1996, where the niches were still empty).

Westminster Abbey, London

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