Terror in Nigeria: 265 children & teachers still held after Catholic school raid. One father dead from grief.
Newsroom (27/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) In the dusty stillness of central Nigeria, the night of November 21 exploded into nightmare. Motorcycle-riding gunmen stormed St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school, ripping more than 300 children and teachers from their beds. Five days later, 265 souls (253 children aged 10-18, some as young as five in the nursery section, and 12 teachers) remain vanished in the bush, hostages of an unseen enemy.
Fifty terrified children managed to flee in the chaos and stumbled home on November 22-23. But for hundreds of parents, the reunion never came.
“Some families had all their children taken away,” Sister Mary Barron, superior general of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles who run the school, told the BBC, her voice cracking. “They send every child they have because this is the only good school in the area. They have no option.”
Bishop Bulus Dauwa Yohanna of Kontagora, whose diocese owns the school, spoke to OSV News by phone on November 25 with exhaustion etched in every word. “The people are traumatized. They feel helpless and confused. But they are hopeful. They are even encouraging us,” he said, almost incredulous at their resilience while a military search operation combs the vast countryside.
In one home, hope died before any ransom demand arrived. Antony, a father of three little ones in the nursery section, collapsed and died when he learned his entire young family had been stolen, according to Rev. John Hayab, northern chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria.
“The pain and trauma of the parents are still very fresh,” Rev. Hayab told Arise TV on November 25. “We tried speaking to parents today, and they were scared even to talk.”
Resident Joseph Godfery Gyawo described a community frozen in anguish. “Most parents are traumatized. The whole community is devastated. You can imagine five-year-olds in the hands of these people,” he told OSV News.
During his Sunday Angelus on November 23, Pope Leo XIV lifted his voice for Nigeria’s children and teachers, saying he was “deeply saddened” by the mass abduction in Africa’s most populous nation.
Yet Nigeria is not alone in its grief. In Cameroon, the Church is drawing a defiant line in the sand.
On November 15, Father John Berinyuy Tatah was seized by armed men claiming to be separatist fighters in the English-speaking northwest. Three days later, four priests and a layman who went to negotiate his release were themselves kidnapped, only to be freed four days after. Father Berinyuy remains captive.
Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamenda issued a blistering ultimatum: the Church will pay no ransom and set November 26 as the deadline for the priest’s unconditional release. If it passes, every Catholic school, parish, and mission in the Ndop region will shut its doors and all priests will withdraw.
And if Father Berinyuy is still missing by November 28, the archbishop declared he will lead every priest, religious, and lay faithful in the archdiocese on a march straight to the place the priest is believed held. “We will either bring him back home or remain there until he is released,” he vowed.
Leading Cameroonian priest Father Humphrey Tatah Mbuy condemned the abduction in searing terms: “You cannot say you are fighting for people and at the same time torture and kill them. It makes no sense.”
From the silent dormitories of Papiri to the tense parishes of Ndop, two nations and countless Catholic families wait, pray, and refuse to look away, clinging to the fragile belief that their children and shepherds will come home.
- Raju Hasmukh with files form OSV News
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