Kidnappers freed a Catholic priest and four other people on Wednesday in the West African nation of Mali. Gunmen released Fr. Léon Douyon on June 23, 72 hours after seizing him, reported the French public radio service RFI. The five kidnap victims were dropped off at the
MOPTI, Mali — A Catholic priest is among five people kidnapped on Monday in the West African nation of Mali. ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner, reported that the priest serving in the Diocese of Mopti was abducted alongside four others by gunmen on the morning of
They were the world’s most famous hostages, yet no one seemed to know what it had taken to bring them home or how they had survived. Members of the class of 2014 at Nigeria’s Chibok Government Secondary School for Girls had been just a few
The Pakistani Christian woman who replaced Asia Bibi in her prison cell on death row, Shaguftah Kausar, has—after a dozen delays since April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic—been acquitted from the death penalty by the Lahore high court. The mother of four, along with her disabled
More than 300 mourners protested for several hours alongside the body of a Christian laborer allegedly poisoned by Muslims as officials urged them to bury their dead. “O Lord we are helpless” and “Injustice with Christians” stated placards as villagers from Tariqabad blocked a major
Gunmen attacked a Catholic parish in northern Nigeria Thursday, killing one priest and kidnapping another. Fr. Alphonsus Bello was found dead May 21, the morning after his parish, St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in the Diocese of Sokoto, was attacked by armed bandits. He was
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on May 11, 2021, it was discovered that Marta Shimoni Church in Turkey’s village of Mehr was attacked and desecrated by unknown persons. This is the same village where the elderly parents of a Chaldean Catholic priest were kidnapped last
In 2015 Petr Jasek traveled to Sudan as part of his routine but not-so-routine work with Voice of the Martyrs in Africa. This was to be a fact-finding trip following reports of church demolitions and mistreatment of Christians in the largely Islamic, hostile country. The
Escalating bloodshed in Nigeria is fueled in part by religious extremism – and the United States must recognize this in order to achieve peace, says the former U.S. religious freedom ambassador. “This thing’s going to blow up on us, as we would say, ‘bigger than
There is a generalized panic” among the population, and fear of new attacks by terrorist groups, even in Pemba, the capital city of the province of Cabo Delgado, according to Father Kwiriwi Fonseca, a member of the communications team for the diocese of Pemba. He
