The Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri, in southern Nigeria, has declared a week of prayer in reparation following the disturbing desecration of the Adoration Chapel at St. Mulumba Parish, where unknown assailants stole a monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament.
Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji condemned the act as a grave irreverence. The perpetrators broke through the roof during rainy weather in the early hours of April 29.
“It is with great sadness that we inform you of the desecration of the Chapel of Adoration of St. Mulumba Parish, Wetheral Road, Owerri,” the Archbishop said in a statement.
“As reported by the Parish Priest, Rev. Fr. Raymond Madu, unknown persons opened parts of the roof, gained access through the ceiling, and made away with the monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament.”
Archbishop Ugorji directed all parishioners of St. Mulumba Parish to observe a one-week prayer of reparation from Friday, May 1, to Friday, May 8, 2026, between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. daily.
Father Humphrey Tatah Mbuy, a prominent Cameroonian priest, told CWR that a prayer of reparation is “a liturgical rite and spiritual act performed to make amends for the sacrilege committed against God and to restore the sacred character of the building.”
He explained that when a church is desecrated either through vandalism, theft of the Eucharist, satanic rituals, or other serious profanations, it is no longer considered a holy place fit for worship.”
He said that when that happens, the said Church or house of worship must be ‘repaired’ not just physically, like fixing broken windows or doors, but also spiritually through prayer.
“The prayer is a way for the Church to apologize to God for the offense committed against His house,” the priest said.
Archbishop Gorji urged vigilance in preserving the Blessed Sacrament.
“All priests in the Owerri Archdiocese are reminded to strictly adhere to the norms and directives regarding the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and adoration to avoid any recurrence,” he stated. “We emphasize that exposition is to take place only when a fitting attendance of the faithful is assured (cf. Can. 942). The Blessed Sacrament must never be left unattended during exposition.”
The incident comes amid a surge of violent attacks targeting not only Christians but also their places of worship across Nigeria.
On May 8, 2026, Fulani ethnic militias stormed Ngbra-Zongo village in the Kwall District, northwest of the Plateau State capital, Jos, killing at least 13 Christians, including a pregnant woman. The attackers reportedly took advantage of the rainy night, striking around 12:20 a.m. while residents slept. They moved from house to house, shooting and hacking residents to death.
Just weeks earlier, on April 22, gunmen shot and killed Anglican priest Rev. Emmanuel Ezeokwe at his home in Jos at approximately 12:48 a.m.
While exact figures are difficult to verify, NGOs and Church groups estimate that attacks on churches and the number of Christians killed run into the thousands. According to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List, Nigeria experienced the highest number of Christian killings globally from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025. Of the 4,849 Christians murdered worldwide for their faith, 3,490—72% of the total—were in Nigeria. This marks an increase from the 3,100 deaths recorded the previous year. Despite these staggering figures, Nigeria ranked seventh on the list of the 50 most dangerous countries for Christians.
The International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety), a Catholic-inspired NGO tracking Christian killings in Nigeria, reports that nearly 20,000 churches were attacked, burned, or destroyed between 2009 and 2023. Over 125,000 Christians were killed within the same period. Additionally, more than 1,100 Christian communities were seized and occupied by jihadist forces allegedly backed or protected by the government.
On average, at least 4,000 Christians are killed each year in Nigeria, according to Global Christian Relief, which describes the country as “the world’s center of Christian martyrs.”
On May 8, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) condemned the incessant attacks in a white paper titled “Nonstate Violators of Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Fulani Militants.”
“In recent years, armed actors from a Fulani ethnic background have perpetrated some of the most notorious, visible, and deadly attacks on religious communities in Nigeria—often but not exclusively against Christians,” the USCIRF document stated.
Fulani ethnic militias are only the latest terrorist organization to join the roster of terror groups, making life increasingly untenable for Nigerian Christians to freely practice their faith. Boko Haram was the first, beginning attacks in 2009 with the stated goal of creating a caliphate across the Sahel. Intersociety reports that there are currently about 22 terrorist groups operating in Nigeria.
Emeka Umeagbalasi, Director of Intersociety, along with many other Church leaders, has frequently framed the attacks as a “genocide” against Christians.
“The intention is to wipe out Christianity, and we have reason to believe that if nothing is done, Christianity will be wiped out from Nigeria by 2075,” he told CWR.
However, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, who lives with the daily realities of terrorist attacks in the northern Nigerian state of Sokoto, offers a more nuanced interpretation of the prevailing violence in Africa’s most populous country. The cleric refuses to view Nigeria’s conflict through the binary lens through which many African conflicts are presented.
“All our conflicts are either framed as tribal, ethnic, or religious,” Bishop Kukah told CWR. “We lose the nuances and context of these conflicts; we are unable to grasp the historical, and sometimes internal and external dynamics, that produce these conflicts. As you know, no two conflicts are ever the same.”
“The notion that Christians and Muslims are always fighting in Nigeria has gained traction over time and has become a popular myth that hides the fraud that masquerades as leadership in most parts of Africa, and especially Nigeria,” he added.
He argued that to effectively fight terrorism, Nigeria must seriously address its other devils: corruption, bad governance, and the paying of allegiance to tribal loyalties. He urged the government to rein in the perpetrators of violence.
“The government has a constitutional and statutory duty to protect human rights and secure basic justice for all,” Bishop Kukah said. “The role of government is to guarantee the minimum conditions that make human rights and justice possible. The failure to protect the people is put squarely at the doorstep of the Federal Government, which has lost the capacity to rein in the perpetrators of violence who now terrorize the people in different parts of the country at will.”
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“unknown assailants” Not to speak the truth when you know it is a lie.
Now, now, you know that the loquacious Pope says we must have dialogue and respect for other people’s beliefs….
Correction to my comment: Saladin paraded on the ground the main remains of the Holy Cross through Damascus, not Baghdad, tied to his horse tail. This was the last we know of the main remains of the Holy Cross.
BOTH views are correct: Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji (desecration of what is Catholic) and Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah (the more nuanced failure of civil government).
And POPE LEO XIV’s catechesis focus on the Documents of Vatican II (not the disconnected spirit of Vatican II) can explain why: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light . . .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, n. 22, CAPS added).
Without the INCARNATION and, withing Him, the confirmed “transcendent dignity of each human person,” we have both pre-Christian and post-Christian tribalism plus the spiritual vacuity, transitory and eventually groundless modern civil government in the West (e.g., the charter of the EU reflecting its Classical roots as divorced from its Christian roots).
In the West, the long descent after the rationalistic 16th-century Enlightenment into Secular-ISM is undeniable (think 1914 and 1939). In the domain of Islam, in the 8th Century, Arab tribalism was replaced under the Persian (non-Arabian) Abbasid triumph over the Umayyads. The capital was moved from Mecca to Baghdad and “the effect was to bring all Moslems into the same subjection to an absolute sovereign [….] Arab tribal loyalties rapidly evaporated…” (W.H. McNeill, “Rise of the West,” 1963) and Allah also became totally inscrutable, deterministic, and unquestioned.
QUESTION: What then, of the incarnational mystery of personal human freedom and responsibility? The optimistic Nostra Aetate proposes a bridge—as persons—between relational witnesses to Christ and Muslim followers of Islam. So far, so good, but it seems incomplete on both Western history and Islamic a-history when read, by many, apart from the underlying historical fact noted in Gaudium et Spes, n. 22, above (and Dei Verbum).
What does “fraternity” mean within the Christian revelation of the human person, as revealed by the historical event [!] of the Incarnation; and what does it mean to individual Muslim within the sectarian “umma,” based instead on the a-historical, “uncreated” and polyglot Qur’an? The “Word made flesh” vs the “word made book”? And, the Theotokos vs Muhammad as the substitute “messenger”? And, the leavening of civilization vs outbreaks of apocalyptic jihad as in Nigeria?
SHOW AND TELL: As a retired and yet curious non-specialist, yours truly had the spare time to reframe the triangular novelty of our current moment (in a quarter-million words with 1,300 diverse footnotes): “Beyond Secularism and Jihad: A Triangular Inquiry into the Mosque, the Manger & Modernity,” University Press of America”, 2012. While personally uncredentialed, three prominent sources were Pope Benedict XVI (the Regensburg Lecture, 2006), Farouq Hassan (The Concept of State and Law in Islam, 1981, triggered by the 1979 Iran hostage crisis), and Heinrich Rommen (The State in Catholic Thought, 1945; and The Natural Law, 1998).
For whatever it might be worth, the CWR author interview on this “tri-alogue” [!] is found at: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/04/29/the-mosque-the-manger-and-modernity/
At the interpersonal level (not exactly the same as “interreligious” or even “intercultural”) are surprising nudges from actual grace and the “fruits of the Holy Spirit”…
During the Crusades the opposing armies not infrequently found “Truce of God” interludes, and coffee breaks for gift exchanges and tournaments of skill. Western armies often cared for and returned Muslim children captured in battle and, of the Muslims, Oliverius Scholasticus (a member of a defeated Frankish army) offers this striking report:
“Who could doubt that such goodness, friendship and charity came from God. Men whose parents, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters had died in agony at our hands, whose lands we took, whom we drove naked from their homes, revived us with their own food when we were dying of hunger, and showered us with kindness even while we were in their power” (Friedrich Heer, “The Medieval World,” 1963, p. 144).
On the other hand, see this corrective by historian R. Ibrahim. Saladin took the remains of the Holy Cross from Jerusalem and paraded them on the ground tied to his horse through Bagdad; that was the last anyone saw of the Cross:
The Saladin Myth Exposed:
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/10/30/2024/the-saladin-myth-fake-history-exposed
This is a very strange happening and feels like an inside job of some sort. Maybe by someone who thought the monstrance is pure solid gold and had some street value???
My question would be primarily, WHO allowed the Blessed Sacrament to sit out all night in a church? In my church exposition is mostly carried out in the day on Fridays where there is always several people there, or if at night there is a sign up sheet to cover the complete time frame. But having it sit out all night alone???? Never. Why was it left out all night in a locked church? I assume it was locked because they entered through the roof to get at the monstrance. Who authorized this? The church needs an investigation and the priests and pastor of this parish need to be closely questioned.