Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 28, 2025 / 10:37 am (CNA).
A brutal attack by extremist Muslim herdsmen in Nigeria on Sunday left dozens dead and resulted in the kidnapping of a Catholic priest and several nuns.
Hundreds of Jihadist Fulani herdsmen gunned down nearly 40 people, more than half of them Christians, across several villages on Sunday, according to a report by Truth Nigeria, a humanitarian-aid nonprofit that seeks to document Nigeria’s struggles with corruption and crime.
The attack occurred three days after the shooting of Father Solomon Atongo, a priest of St. John Quasi Parish in Jimba, and the kidnapping of two of his companions. Atongo is currently receiving treatment for his wounds.
Some of Sunday’s attacks took place in Aondona, the hometown of Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Makurdi, and appear to be retaliatory after Anagbe, who is a Claretian missionary, testified in a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in March that the Nigerian government is doing nothing to stop the systemic persecution and elimination of Christians.
Violence in the region has increased since Anagbe’s testimony in the U.S. capital, according to Douglas Burton, director of Truth Nigeria, who appeared on “EWTN News Nightly” on Tuesday to discuss ongoing violence and kidnappings occurring across the West African country.
“It’s a tragic situation, and the story is in play,” Burton told anchor Erik Rosales regarding Sunday’s attacks in the central Benue state. “And what happened is that Fulani terrorists attacked [Anagbe’s] home village.”
As reported by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, Anagbe testified on March 12 before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa that “the experience of the Nigerian Christians today can be summed up as that of a Church under Islamist extermination. It is frightening to live there.”
Later that day Anagbe told “EWTN News Nightly” that “the persecution of Christians generally and Catholics in Nigeria is the work of an Islamic agenda to conquer the territory and make it become an Islamic state in West Africa.”
Burton estimated the number of deaths to be “up to 36” in this Sunday’s massacre in Anagbe’s village, though Reuters has reported the death toll to be “at least 42 people” overall in the attacks in the Ahume, Tyolaha, and Tse-Ubiam villages that day.
A former State Department official, Burton said he was unaware of the Nigerian government making any arrests in connection with the Sunday attacks. “There’s been no evidence that these attacks will be halted,” he said.
This is not a surprise to Burton, who further explained on “EWTN News Nightly” that the Nigerian army “is really overstretched,” with over half of the country’s military concentrated in the northeast region of the 36-state country, where there is currently a “deadly insurgency.”
He also noted unrest in the far-west region in addition to the Middle Belt states, where Sunday’s attacks occurred. “The Nigerian military really needs more people and the police need more recruitment,” Burton said. “That has been the position that we have taken at Truth Nigeria.”
Nigeria is the largest country on the African continent and the sixth-largest country in the world, with a population of approximately 236 million.
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Praying for the victims and their families, that the hostages will be released unharmed, that those who are responsible for this heinous crime will be held accountable, and that there will be a lasting Peace in Nigeria.🙏
But isn’t Islam a religion of peace?
Diogenes- and the Crusades?
The Crusades were 700 years ago. Hopefully some minds have been opened in that time frame??? There is no excuse for this sort of UNPROVOKED behavior in the modern era. Let people worship as they will. But tolerance is not a quality that Islamists value. The era when Islam conquered an held a large chunk of Europe have been too soon forgotten.
Give it a rest “Br.Jaques”.
That was my first thought too, Br. Jacques. Not to mention the St. Bartholomew Day massacre, countless pogroms right into the 20th century, Northern Ireland, etc., etc.
We can look at most religions & find examples of violence committed. It’s more about the darkness in our hearts than the doctrines of our faith.
The Crusades were a belated response to Islamic aggression against and persecution of Christians.
The Crusades were a perfectly justifiable and moral response to over 850 Muslim attacks in Western Europe. Your ignorance of history is appalling.
Several scholars have debunked the long-peddled untruth about the Crusades. See for example, this debunking by military historian R. Ibrahim in
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2015/02/12/the-truth-about-the-crusades/
And in this interview https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2024/10/04/video-the-truth-about-the-crusades/
Ibrahim observes, “The truth, of course, is very different from the Fake History being peddled by the NYT and friends. The Crusades were a militant response to more than four centuries of jihadist aggression that saw three-quarters of the Christian world swallowed up by Islam. The particular Muslim invasions (between 1071 and 1095) that occasioned the First Crusade were actually motivated by noble — indeed, altruistic — sentiments. During that period and in the decades before it, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Christians (Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, etc.) were killed or enslaved, and tens of thousands of churches were ritually desecrated, torched, and/or turned into mosques. Think what “ISIS” did to Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s, but times a hundred, and for decades.
Nor were atrocities limited to Asia Minor or its indigenous Christians: “As the Turks were ruling the lands of Syria and Palestine, they inflicted injuries on [European] Christians who went to pray in Jerusalem, beat them, pillaged them, [and] levied the poll tax [jizya],” writes Michael the Syrian, a contemporary. Moreover, “every time they saw a caravan of Christians, particularly of those from Rome and the lands of Italy, they made every effort to cause their death in diverse ways.” Such was the fate of one German pilgrimage to Jerusalem. According to one of the pilgrims:
Accompanying this journey was a noble abbess of graceful body and of a religious outlook. Setting aside the cares of the sisters committed to her and against the advice of the wise, she undertook this great and dangerous pilgrimage. The pagans captured her, and in the sight of all, these shameless men raped her until she breathed her last, to the dishonor of all Christians. Christ’s enemies performed such abuses and others like them on the Christians.”
See also this scholarly interview by CWR of a professor on the subject of Christian Slavery under Islam which covers the origins of the Crusades as the Christian Greek Roman Emperor Alexius I Comnenos called for help from the West against the Muslim attacks against the Christian Roman Empire and how Pope Urban II gave him this help by organizing the First Crusade:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/12/16/the-forgotten-history-of-christian-slavery-under-islam/
https://www.thepostil.com/author/dario-fernandez-morera/
There was enslavement of Christians and all sorts of other people by the Berbers, Arabs, and Ottomans.
Over a million Europeans were kidnapped into slavery but many times more Africans were marched into slavery on the Trans Sahara route. Some were sold to Christians as well as to Muslims and Jews. Slavery was an equal opportunity venture.
Please continue to pray for us it is our mother land.
I prayed for Africa just this morning.
🙂
Islam is incompatible with civilized society. To expect anything else is a fool’s errand.
See this scholarly interview on Christian Slavery under Islam by Father Connolly of CWR, with a contemporary illustration of the slave market in Islamic Constantinople:
https://www.thepostil.com/christian-slavery-under-islam-a-conversation-with-dario-fernandez-morera/
and historian R. Ibrahim account of just now another atrocity vs Christians in Egypt:
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2025/05/29/video-nightmarish-attack-on-egypts-christians-oh-world-do-you-see/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup
Video Nightmarish Attack on Egypt Christians “Oh World—Do You See?!”