The New Martyrs Commission has been charged with the task of measuring and collecting the a wide-spread and unprecedented documentation. It is responsible for supporting every effort made to preserve the memory of the Church, wherever it was persecuted and where it suffered.

At present the Commission has received 4,793 names, summarising, computerising, translating brief biographical news of some 3,050 witnesses of faith who shed their blood in carrying out their Christian virtues and for the love of the Gospel, or also who were only persecuted. Among them, a large number are those who gave their lives in the context of the great totalitarianism of this century, under the Nazi and the Soviet regimes; as well as Christians who died in the exercise of charity and reconciliation in other latitudes. It is difficult to find a context or historical period in the 1900 where there is no trace of the testimony to Christ.

This mark can be found in the documents on which the Commission is working. The majority of them (82%) comes from Europe, while 8% come from Africa, 8% from Asia and Oceania and 2% from Latin America. These percentages do not so much highlight the different effective proportions of martyrdom in each continent, as the speed and the possibility of gathering the essential documents required, which the local Churches must supply.