Enugu, Nigeria, Oct 30, 2019 / 06:12 pm (CNA).- The vice-rector of a seminary in Nigeria was kidnapped earlier this week and released two days later, the latest in the ongoing violence against priests that has led Enugu State authorities to ramp up security efforts.
Father Arinze Madu, the vice-rector for the Queen of Apostles Seminary, was taken by unknown gunmen while exiting the seminary at around 6 p.m. on Monday, according to local media reports.
According to the Nigerian newspaper The Punch, a state police public relations officer said the priest was released Wednesday and was unharmed. Because security forces were still involved in the mission, he declined to give further details about the operation.
Father Benjamin Achi, director of communications for the Diocese of Enugu, described the abduction as “terrifying.” He said that this year alone, several priests have either been attacked or killed in the southern Nigerian state of Enugu.
“This incident is coming barely two months after Rev. Fr. Offu was gruesomely killed by gunmen at Ihe-Agbudu Road [in] August,” he said, according to The Punch.
“Before Fr. Offu’s murder, Rev. Fr. Paulinus Ilo was attacked by Fulani Herdsmen along Numeh-Nenwe road in Nkanu East Local Government Area of the state,” he added.
Since these attacks, the state has increased security measures, by implementing forest guards, neighborhood watch services, and air surveillance. According to the Nigerian newspaper the Daily Post, the state government has also purchased 260 vehicles, including cars, bikes, and motorcycles, for their security forces.
In a recent statement, the Enugu State government said it was committed “to make the state safe and to sustain the enviable status of Enugu as one of the safest and most peaceful states in Nigeria,” the Daily Post reported.
“[The] government will continue to support the security agencies to secure lives and property of the people,” read the statement.
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Maputo, Mozambique, Aug 10, 2019 / 06:01 am (CNA).- Pope Francis’ visit to Mozambique Sept. 5-6 will be a moment of rejoicing for Catholics in that country, who greatly look forward to the encounter, according to a priest from the country.
Catholic Archbishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Jos marches alongside evangelical leader Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam in front of the Plateau state governor’s office building in Jos, Nigeria, Jan. 8, 2024. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, photo by Plateau State Government Media Team.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 9, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).
Thousands of Christians rallied yesterday in front of the governor’s office in Nigeria’s Plateau state to demand action after more than 200 were killed in a series of Christmas massacres.
The attacks, which targeted Christian villages beginning Dec. 23 and continuing through Christmas day, left Christian communities in Nigeria’s Plateau state reeling. Photos obtained by CNA after the attack showed villagers burying their slain relatives and loved ones in mass graves.
According to Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, an evangelical leader who helped to organize the rally, the attacks also left 15,000 people displaced without homes.
Among the demands being made by the protestors, Para-Mallam said that they asked for an “urgent humanitarian relief material response by the state and federal government” and for the arrest of the perpetrators of the Christmas massacre, which he called a “genocidal,” “terrorist” attack.
Thousands of Christians peacefully and prayerfully march to a rally in front of the Nigerian Plateau state governor’s office building in protest of the 2023 Christmas massacre that left over 200 Christian Nigerians dead, Jan. 8, 2024. Credit: Photo courtesy of Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, photo by Plateau State Government Media Team.
The attack marks the latest instance of terrorists targeting Christian Nigerians on significant Christian feast days. In 2022, on Pentecost Sunday, 39 Catholic worshippers were killed at the St. Francis Xavier Owo Catholic Parish in Ondo Diocese.
Religious freedom advocates believe that militant Muslim Fulani herdsmen were responsible for the Christmas attacks. In Nigeria as a whole, at least 60,000 Christians have been killed in the past two decades. An estimated 3,462 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the first 200 days of 2021, or 17 per day, according to a new study.
Due to continued attacks, Nigeria is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian, according to a 2023 report by the advocacy group International Christian Concern.
Para-Mallam told CNA that Nigeria’s middle belt region, of which Plateau state is a part, has “suffered sustained attacks for over a decade now with destruction of lives and properties.”
The thousands of protestors at the rally, he said, were “mournful, angry, but surprisingly joyful.”
Their “central objective,” he explained, was “to ask for an end to the killings not just in Plateau but Nigeria and seek justice for the people.”
Just-In: CAN Plateau State Chapter is having a Peaceful Walk to Government House pic.twitter.com/YbFRqtFI9J
“Above all, it was very peaceful and prayerful,” he added. “The old, the young all together felt that we had to do what we had to do to get our message across.”
According to Para-Mallam, the crowd numbered about 5,000 and included both Catholics and Protestants. Together, he said, they peacefully and prayerfully marched, ending in front of the governor’s office building in the city of Jos. Archbishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Jos and several Catholic priests also took part in the march and rally, according to Para-Mallam.
The demonstration was “mournful, angry, and surprisingly joyful,” according to Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam. Credit: Photos by Nigerian multimedia journalist Jœy Shèkwônúzhïbó, used with permission.
The rally was organized with the help of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), a coalition of Nigerian Christian Churches and groups that includes the Catholic Church in Nigeria.
Para-Mallam said the purpose of the demonstration was to “mourn in solidarity” with the devastated communities as well as to show them that the Church “cares” and “identify with them in the moment of suffering and mourning.”
A secondary purpose for the rally, Para-Mallam said, was to “get the Church on the Plateau to unite and to speak with one voice around the issues of social justice” and to “create awareness nationally and globally about the Christmas season attack.”
Para-Mallam said that Plateau’s governor, Caleb Mutfwang, addressed the crowds at the rally and was “sympathetic and understanding and spoke well on the pains of his people.”
Mutfwang condemned the attacks shortly after they occurred in a Dec. 26 statement in which he said: “This has indeed been a gory Christmas for us.”
“He promised to relay our concerns to the president and committed to work with the president to end the killings in the Plateau state,” Para-Mallam said.
Despite the governor and president voicing their support for the impacted communities, several religious freedom advocates have been critical of the lack of government response to the growing terrorist attacks.
Maria Lozano, a representative for the papal relief group Aid to the Church in Need, told CNA after the attacks that tangible government support was largely absent after the Christmas massacre and that a “lack of response from the government” over the years has worsened the situation in the region. The absence of government support, Lozano said, has forced Christian churches to take on the “primary responsibility of providing assistance.”
Para-Mallam asked for Christians outside of Nigeria to help by offering prayer, advocacy, and humanitarian intervention.
“We also want fellow believers to encourage policymakers to encourage the Nigerian government to do more to end the killings in general and particularly those targeted at Christians,” he said.
For several years now, religious freedom advocates have criticized the U.S. government for failing to include Nigeria in the State Department’s “Countries of Particular Concern” list, which some consider to be America’s most effective tool to encourage foreign governments to address the persecutions in their countries.
“There is no justification as to why the State Department did not designate Nigeria or India as a Country of Particular Concern,” said U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom chair Abraham Cooper and vice chair Frederick Davie in a Jan. 4 statement.
Cooper and Davie mentioned the Christmas massacre as “just the latest example of deadly violence against religious communities in Nigeria.”
Speaking on “EWTN News Nightly” on Monday, Davie said that the decision to leave Nigeria off the list was “particularly” concerning and a “huge mistake.”
Davie told EWTN that “there are some who are saying that the government [of Nigeria] if it is not actively participating in some of this religious persecution is actually standing by and not doing what it can to prevent it.”
“We just believe,” Davie explained, “that by designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, the United States puts itself in a position to work more closely with the government of Nigeria to address some of those fundamental security issues that are going unattended to.”
Despite this, the State Department has left Nigeria off the Countries of Particular Concern list since 2021.
Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Aug 2, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Caritas Spain has mobilized 6,200 volunteers to fight the Ebola epidemic in the affected areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To prevent its spread they have established 22 monitoring points on the border with Uganda and South Sudan.
More than 1,800 have been killed by DR Congo’s Ebloa outbreak in the last year, and 2,700 have been infected. Last month the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency.
Alicia Fernández, a technician with Caritas Spain, is in DR Congo and said that “the fight against Ebola must take place in the communities more than in the hospitals, awareness has to be raised in the communities on the importance of maintaining hygienic methods to prevent contagion and the spread of the illness.”
Fernández also stressed the importance of the Church’s action in the fight against this epidemic since “there is no other local actor that can do what the Church does,” as it is “implanted in the life of the communities, living with them their day to day and therefore enjoys their trust and also because since the first known case it has been working to contain the outbreak.”
According to a statement by Caritas Spain, in the Diocese of Goma a second case of Ebola has been recorded and so efforts are focused on locating those who have maintained contact with the stricken person and adopting the necessary measures.
In the dioceses of Butembo and Bunia, Caritas has distributed in the last six months more than 34,000 pounds of aid to more than 23,000 sick and quarantined people. They have also published more than 9,000 posters and 9,000 informational pamphlets.
One of the Caritas social workers explained that “if a teacher falls sick, all his students are placed in quarantine, separated from their families. Caritas care for these people.”
The border with South Sudan is another of the critical points in the spread of the Ebola epidemic. The Diocese of Mahagi is located there, where one case has been detected. Caritas activated the response protocol, isolated the patient and contacted her family to disinfect the house, locate those who were in contact with her and the medical staff who treated her, as well as the sick people who were admitted to the hospital at the same time.
In addition, all the staff of Caritas’ health centers in Mahagi are undergoing training to respond to the disease.
There also have been established 22 control points at the two border crossings with Uganda and South Sudan, and for every ten houses Caritas has established an observation point, in which a person is responsible for raising awareness about the epidemic and monitoring to detect and isolate new cases.
“We have to contain the epidemic so it doesn’t reach the camps for the refugees and internally displaced people, because that would be a catastrophe,” said the director of Caritas Mahagi.
Two Ebola fatalities were confirmed in Uganda in June.
Rwanda briefly closed its border with DR Congo Aug. 1 over fears the disease might spread there.
Efforts to contain the disease have been hampered by misinformation and distrust on the part of local communities, who in some cases have retaliated against health teams by attacking them. Nearly 200 attacks on medical centers and staff have been reported this year, according to the BBC. This has limited many of the health services that non-governmental organizations are able to provide.
More than 161,000 people have received the Ebola vaccine, which is 99% effective, according to the BBC, but some are fearful of it and refuse to receive it. In addition, violence in the eastern part of the DRC has made it difficult to reach some areas of the country, and difficult to monitor the virus as it spreads.
Ebola is a deadly virus that is primarily spread through contact with bodily fluids. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pains and occasional bleeding. The disease is fatal in up to 90 percent of cases.
Several outbreaks have taken place in Africa in recent decades. An outbreak in 2014-2016 in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people and spread briefly to Spain, the US, and the UK.
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