According to local sources, a pregnant Christian woman in India suffered a miscarriage after she was brutally beaten by a mob of radical Hindu nationalists. The radicals justified their attack by falsely claiming their Christian victims were involved in forced religious conversions to Christianity. On
At the beginning of this year Open Doors, an international Christian NGO, published its annual World Watch List 2021. This highlights countries in which Christians face high to extreme levels of persecution. Last year there were 74 countries on the list. This means that 340 million Christians had
The body of a Catholic priest was discovered in Nigeria on Saturday, a day after he was kidnapped by armed men. Agenzia Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies, reported on Jan. 18 that Fr. John Gbakaan “was allegedly executed with a machete
The diocese of Rome will host a memorial Mass on Friday for Servant of God Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic politician in Pakistan assassinated by an Islamic terrorist group 10 years ago. Bhatti served as Pakistan’s Federal Minister of Minorities Affairs from 2008 to 2011. He advocated for four
In 2021, modern-day persecution against Christians is at an all-time high—with numbers increasing at an alarming rate. Research for the Open Doors’ 2021 World Watch List—the most in-depth investigative research and report on Christian persecution available—shows that today, more than 340 million people worldwide face persecution and
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that the Turkish authorities have stalled the investigation into the disappearance of elderly Assyrian-Chaldean Christians Hurmüz and Şimuni Diril. They were kidnapped from the Turkish village of Mehr, located near the Iraqi border, one-year prior on January 11, 2020. The abductors
According to the Catholic outlet AsiaNews, headquartered in Rome, Bishop Andrea Han Jingtao, 99, a leader in the underground Catholic Church in China, died Dec. 30. Han Jingtao was the underground Bishop of Siping. In his early years growing up in a Catholic family, Han
A Catholic archbishop called Tuesday for renewed prayers for a kidnapped bishop following “misleading” reports about the bishop’s fate. Archbishop Anthony Obinna urged “all Christ’s faithful and people of goodwill” to disregard reports that kidnappers had killed Bishop Moses Chikwe. A Dec. 29 statement issued on Obinna’s
The bishops of Nigeria have urged prayer for the safety and release of a Nigerian Catholic bishop who was abducted Sunday in Owerri, the capital of Nigeria’s Imo State. Bishop Moses Chikwe “is said to have been kidnapped in the night of Sunday 27 December
China continues to occupy headlines across the globe, but party officials within the Great Wall have taken little, if any, heed of international opinion. Media reports vary from anxious predictions of China’s economic rise to critical descriptions of police arrests of anyone who reveals the
