Requires Adobe Acrobat.

"I do know that there are many Asian, Indian, Brazilian and Korean missionaries who have been killed that you will never hear about since you probably are not reading Korean, Portuguese or Chinese newspapers (nor are they on the Internet)," says Scott Sunquist, professor of world missions at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

David B. Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates based on 30 years of research that 130 or so Christian foreign missionaries of all faiths are killed each year — and most are not reported by newspapers. He says that number could be much higher, depending on how a "missionary" is defined.

And in a larger sense, he says anyone who bears witness of his beliefs is doing missionary work. He figures based on reports collected over 30 years that a staggering 160,000 such Christians are killed for their beliefs each year, becoming martyrs (a Greek word that means "to witness").

How dangerous is the world today for missionaries?

Bill Bangham, spokesman for the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, said, "We've been sending out missionaries since the mid-1800s, and 24 have suffered violent deaths over that time. But eight of them have occurred in the last three years."

Danger can affect all faiths. Of the 177 missionary fatalities identified by the Morning News, 126 were Catholics; 17 were LDS; 15 were Baptists; nine were listed only as "Christian"; four were evangelical Christians; two were Wycliffe Bible translators; and one each came from the Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists and Gospel for Asia.