In Africa, the Church is expanding, but so is persecution.
Editor (23/06/2025 11:52, Gaudium Press) In Africa Catholicism is expanding, but so are the attacks against it. Perhaps for this very reason.
Nigeria is perhaps the country where Christians are most persecuted in the world.
La Razon reports that in mid-June “around 100 people” (some reports say 200) were killed in Yelewata, a small town in the state of Benue, in a massacre perpetrated by Muslim Fulani herdsmen. “Most of these people [were] internally displaced persons hosted by the Catholic mission,” said Pope Leo XIV, who remembered them publicly, “and they were burned alive in their homes.”
In Gobirawa Chali, a village in northeastern Nigeria, on April 20, gunmen went from house to house and killed 20 people. A month ago, Boko Haram terrorists killed 17 people in the town of Kopre.
Persecution in Sudan, Mozambique
In Mozambique, where Christians have been suffering persecution from radical Muslim groups since 2017, Mercedarian nuns of the Blessed Sacrament, who have been carrying out their missionary work for 17 years in the city of Pemba, in the north of the country, suffered an assault by eight men armed with machetes, threatened them with death and robbed them.
In Sudan, which is experiencing a war between the military and rebel militias, Father Luka Jomo, parish priest in the city of El Fasher, capital of the state of North Darfur, was shot and killed. The priest died along with two other young men.
Compiled by Teresa Joseph
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