Vatican City, Jul 28, 2025 / 14:10 pm (CNA).
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Monday expressed his concern over the July 27 attack on a Catholic church in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which killed at least 31 members of the Eucharistic Crusade, a prayer movement and an apostolate for children and young people focused on devotion to the Eucharist and personal sanctification.
“This is a dangerous sign,” Parolin declared, pointing to the growing threat from forces identified as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
For the Italian prelate, this group is a force “that in practice represents Islamic jihad and that imposes itself through force and violence.”
The attack has once again raised the alarm about the insecurity of Christians in the region: “This represents an additional problem in a region that already suffers from many conflicts of an ethnic, cultural, and sociopolitical nature. The addition of a religious aspect now further aggravates the situation,” Parolin told the media during a break at an event with Catholic influencers at the Via della Conciliazione auditorium a short distance from the Vatican.
According to initial reports, the terrorists stormed a Catholic church in northwestern DRC while they were participating in a prayer vigil.
According to the BBC, members of the ADF stormed a church in the town of Komanda, where they shot dead Catholic worshippers and then looted and burned nearby businesses.
Komanda is in the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a mineral-rich area contested by several armed groups.
The Vatican cardinal was also asked about the attack earlier this month on Holy Family Catholic Church, the only Catholic church in Gaza, which left three people dead, including two refugee women, and said that it is up to Israel to prevent such attacks.
“It’s up to Israel to find a way to ensure that these mistakes are not repeated. I believe that, if they want to, they can find a way,” he stated.
Asked about the war between Israel and Hamas, he stated that “the solution lies in direct dialogue between the two parties, with a view to establishing two autonomous states.”
The Holy See’s secretary of state acknowledged that “this is becoming increasingly difficult, also because of the situation that has been created and is being created in the West Bank.”
In his analysis, Parolin emphasized that “even in these months, Israeli settlements do not, from a practical point of view, favor the creation of the State of Palestine.”
The cardinal also referred to an upcoming attempt to revive the peace process: “Now it appears there will be a conference in New York — I don’t know if this week or exactly when — sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia to find the practical terms for the implementation of the State [of Palestine].” He added cautiously: “We hope it will bring something positive.”
Regarding communication between the Holy See and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Parolin said: “Of course, we are in constant contact. He [the patriarch] informs us of all the steps being taken; he also seeks our advice, and therefore there is very strong collaboration.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Today’s Church hides its head like an ostrich and wants to be a doormat Christianity. But this has been going on for centuries. This gave rise to the Crusades, which were valiant and manly Christian efforts to stop the religion of peace from destroying Christianity. All these following areas s were once majority Christian: Egypt (90% Copts until the religion of peace came in the seventh century); Israel, Lebanon, the Palestinian territory, Syria (where Christians were first called Christians!), Anatolia (today’s Turkey), North Africa (the land of Tertullian and St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Athanasius of Alexandria and St. Augustine of Hippo!)…there were even Christian (and Jewish) enclaves in Arabia. Then came the religion of peace in the seventh century and in a century turned all these places into religion of peace majority. In Egypt alone, Christian now make up less than 10% and continue to be persecuted and oppressed). Only Greece, Armenia and Spain ever managed to recover their Christianity after being conquered for many years by the religion of peace. Western Europe will be next to fall in a few decades just from its self-inflicted demographic conquest. See below historian R. Ibrahim account of the persecution of Christians just in the last few decades. Lamentably, neither most of the media nor even CWR mention all of these:
‘We Were Commanded [by Allah] to Kill You!’ The Muslim Persecution of Christians, June 2025
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2025/07/28/we-were-commanded-by-allah-to-kill-you-the-muslim-persecution-of-christians-june-2025/
Neither Parolin nor anyone else at the Vatican would have called out Islamic jihad for an act of terrorism during the reign of Francis. Most of the time, there was no comment at all after one of these attacks in Africa. It’s subtle and incremental, but there has been some improvement since Leo has taken over. It is probably more a testament to how bad it was under Francis. I am grateful that at least some degree of moral decency has been restored.
We read: “For [Cardinal Parolin], this group is a force ‘that in practice represents Islamic jihad and that imposes itself through force and violence’.”
About the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly the Belgian Congo), yours truly is reminded of Joseph Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness”(1899), where ivory hunters show that beneath the veneer of European rationalism and the Enlightenment, they are capable of sinking into an abyss of cruelty and beastiality not seen even in animals.
Instead, a profound darkness of heart” in a fallen world, and the jungle world of “impenetrable darkness,” feed upon each other. The narrator says of Mr. Kurtz:” I was curious to see whether this man who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work there.” Then, a few pages later: “Hadn’t I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together.” And, of the system: “What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency.” About this deity, Kurtz’s last dying words: “the horror, the horror.”
The horror of reason detached from faith, and in the Congo of jihadist belief amputated from reason. Pope Benedict was onto something when we delivered the Regensburg Lecture (2006), more than an off-the-cuff meme, with a dual message to the West and to the encroaching domain of Islam. https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html
Against the moral bankruptcy of modern efficiency and of jihadist finality, both, today the Church has the historic calling to propose the reality of the historic and historical Incarnation (the actual event)—the unity of both the fully human and the fully divine in Jesus Christ, and this unity eternally within the unity of the Triune One.
SUMMARY: “Christ the Lord…by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes, The Church in the Modern World, n. 22). Is it a true “sign of the times” that we must get past the navel gazing roundtables and even the 15 expert study groups on “hot button issues,” none of which had even a single word to say about fatalistic Islam or unchecked jihad.
“’This is a dangerous sign,’ Parolin declared.”, as he sits safely tucked away in the Vatican fortress, totally isolated from the rest of suffering humanity. People who flap their gums and do nothing, as does this Prince of the Church, are worthless.
Moslems consider themselves the enemy of and ultimate conqueror of Christianity. Their long game, as directed by Muhammad himself, is to immigrate mass populations of Moslems to Cristian countries in order to reach the point that they are the largest population group, at which time they will implement sharia law. At that juncture, they can and will force the remaining population to either convert to Islam or be put to death.
Mamdami, the radical candidate running for mayor of New York City, is neither a communist nor a liberal socialist. He is a radical Islamist. He seeks nothing more or less than the Islamification of the United States of America.
We let the enemy in of our own naive free will.
Islamists have slaughtered nearly every Catholic in Nigeria. Now, they have begun open warfare on the Catholics in the Congo. They won’t stop until we decide that they need to be stopped. The burden of this battle falls on us who are willing to witness to Jesus Christ in our words, in our actions and, if it be God’s will, with our very lives.
The enemies of God are not just on some remote continent. They are there as well as here, in our own cherished homeland.