Nigerian archbishop cries at gravesite of slain priest as Catholics protest violence

Seminarians at Good Shepherd Major Seminary in Nigeria’s Kaduna state where four students were kidnapped and one, Michael Nnadi, was killed in 2020. / Credit: Good Shepherd Major Seminary Kaduna/ Facebook

ACI Africa, Jan 26, 2024 / 11:40 am (CNA).

Last year, 2023, was a difficult year for Brother Peter Olarewaju, a postulant at the Benedictine monastery in Nigeria’s Ilorin Diocese who was kidnapped alongside two others at the monastery. Olarewaju underwent different kinds of torture and witnessed the murder of his companion, Brother Godwin Eze.

After his release, Olarewaju said his kidnapping was a blessing, as it had strengthened his faith. He even said that he is now prepared to die for his faith.

“I am prepared to die a martyr in this dangerous country. I am ready any moment to die for Jesus. I feel this very strongly,” Olarewaju said in an interview with ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, on Nov. 26, 2023, days after he was set free by suspected Fulani kidnappers.

The monk’s testimony is not an isolated case in Nigeria, where kidnapping from seminaries, monasteries, and other places of religious formation has been on the rise. While some victims of the kidnappings have been killed, those who survived the ordeal have shared that they have come back stronger — and ready to die for their faith.

Seminarian Melchior Maharini, a Tanzanian who was kidnapped alongside a priest from the Missionaries of Africa community in the Diocese of Minna in August 2023, said the suffering he endured during the three weeks he was held captive strengthened his faith. “I felt my faith grow stronger. I accepted my situation and surrendered everything to God,” he told ACI Africa on Sept. 1, 2023.

Many other seminarians in Nigeria have been kidnapped by Boko Haram militants, Fulani herdsmen, and other bandit groups operating in Africa’s most populous nation. 

In August 2023, seminarian David Igba told ACI Africa that he stared death in the face when a car in which he was traveling on his way to the market in Makurdi was sprayed with bullets by Fulani herdsmen.

In September 2023, seminarian Na’aman Danlami was burned alive in a botched kidnapping incident in the Diocese of Kafanchan. A few days earlier, another seminarian, Ezekiel Nuhu, from the Archdiocese of Abuja, who had gone to spend his holidays in Southern Kaduna, was kidnapped. 

Two years prior, in October 2021, Christ the King Major Seminary of Kafanchan Diocese was attacked and three seminarians were kidnapped.

In one attack that attracted global condemnation in 2020, seminarian Michael Nnadi was brutally murdered after he was kidnapped alongside three others from Good Shepherd Major Seminary in the Diocese of Kaduna. Those behind the kidnapping confessed that they killed Nnadi because he would not stop preaching to them, fearlessly calling them to conversion. 

After Nnadi’s murder, his companions who survived the kidnapping proceeded to St. Augustine Major Seminary in Jos in Nigeria’s Plateau state, where they courageously continued with their formation.

As Christian persecution rages in Nigeria, seminary instructors in the country have shared with ACI Africa that there is an emerging spirituality in Nigerian seminaries that many may find difficult to grasp: the spirituality of martyrdom. 

They say that in Nigeria, those who embark on priestly formation are continuously being made to understand that their calling now entails being ready to defend the faith to the point of death. More than ever before, the seminarians are being reminded that they should be ready to face persecution, including the possibility of being kidnapped and even killed.

Father Peter Hassan, rector of St. Augustine Major Seminary in the Archdiocese of Jos, Plateau state, said that seminaries, just like the wider Nigerian society, have come to terms with “the imminence of death” for being Christian. 

“Nigerian Christians have been victims of violence of apocalyptic proportions for nearly half a century. I can say that we have learned to accept the reality of imminent death,” Hassan said in a Jan. 12 interview with ACI Africa.

He added: “Nevertheless, it is quite inspiring and comforting to see the many young men who are still ready to embrace a life that will certainly turn them into critically endangered species. Yet these same young men are willing to preach the gospel of peace and embrace the culture of dialogue for peaceful coexistence.”

Shortly after Nnadi’s kidnapping and killing, St. Augustine Major Seminary opened its doors to the three seminarians who survived the kidnapping.

Hassan told ACI Africa that the presence of the three former students of Good Shepherd Major Seminary was “a blessing” to the community of St. Augustine Major Seminary.

“Their presence in our seminary was a blessing to our seminarians, a wake-up call to the grim reality that not even the very young are spared by those mindless murderers,” Hassan said.

Back at Good Shepherd, seminarians have remained resilient, enrolling in large numbers even after the 2020 kidnapping and Nnadi’s murder.

In an interview with ACI Africa, Father Samuel Kanta Sakaba, the rector of Good Shepherd Major Seminary, said that instructors at the Catholic institution, which has a current enrollment of 265 seminarians, make it clear that being a priest in Nigeria presents the seminarians with the danger of being kidnapped or killed.

ACI Africa asked Sakaba whether or not the instructors discuss with the seminarians the risks they face, including that of being kidnapped, or even killed, to which the priest responded: “Yes, as formators, we have the duty to take our seminarians through practical experiences — both academic, spiritual, and physical experiences. We share this reality of persecution with them, but for them to understand, we connect the reality of Christian persecution in Nigeria to the experiences of Jesus. This way, we feel that it would be easier for them to not only have the strength to face what they are facing but to also see meaning in their suffering.”

“Suffering is only meaningful if it is linked with the pain of Jesus,” the priest said. “The prophet Isaiah reminds us that ‘by his wounds, we are healed.’ Jesus also teaches us that unless the grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it will remain a single grain, but that it is only when it falls and dies that it yields a rich harvest. Teachings such as these are the ones that deepen our resilience in the face of persecution.”

Sakaba spoke of the joy of those who look forward to “going back to God in a holy way.” 

“Whatever happens, we will all go back to God. How joyful it is to go back to God in a holy way, in a way of sacrifice.” he said. “This holiness is accepting this cross, this pain. Jesus accepted the pain of Calvary, and that led him to his resurrection. Persecution purifies the individual for them to become the finished product for God. I believe that these attacks are God’s project, and no human being can stop God’s work.”

However, the rector clarified that those who enroll at the seminary do not go out seeking danger.

“People here don’t go out putting themselves in situations of risk,” he said. “But when situations such as these happen, the teachings of Jesus and his persecution give us courage to face whatever may come our way.”

Sakaba said that although priestly formation in Nigeria is embracing the “spirituality of martyrdom,” persecution in the West African country presents “a difficult reality.”

“It is difficult to get used to pain. It is difficult to get used to the issues of death … to get familiar with death,” he said. “No one chooses to go into danger just because other people are suffering; it is not part of our nature. But in a situation where you seem not to have an alternative, the grace of God kicks in to strengthen you to face the particular situation.” 

Sakaba said that since the 2020 attack at Good Shepherd Major Seminary, the institution has had an air of uncertainty. He said that some of the kidnappers who were arrested in the incident have been released, a situation he said has plunged the major seminary into “fear of the unknown.”

“It hasn’t been easy for us since the release,” Sabaka told ACI Africa. “The community was thrown into confusion because of the unknown. We don’t know what will happen next. We don’t know when they will come next or what they will do to us. We don’t know who will be taken next.”

In the face of that, however, Sabaka said the resilience of the seminary community has been admirable. “God has been supporting, encouraging, and leading us. His grace assisted us to continue to practice our faith,” he said.

The jihadist attacks, which continue unabated in communities surrounding the seminary, do not make the situation easier.

“Every attack that happens outside our community reminds us of our own 2020 experience. We are shocked, and although we remain deeply wounded, we believe that God has been leading us,” he said.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, and has been adapted by CNA.

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CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- An Italian Catholic priest was freed Thursday two years after he was kidnapped by a jihadist group.

The office of the president of Mali announced Oct. 8 the liberation of Fr. Pierluigi Maccalli, a member of th… […]

Khartoum, Sudan, Aug 1, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA).- Dust and mud brick houses everywhere – as far as the eye can see. The houses are indistinguishable in color from the ground on which they stand. Trees are few and far between.

The road leading northwards from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum shimmers in the burning heat. The temperature tops 110 degrees. At a certain point the car turns off into an unpaved road with deep potholes, entering a residential suburb.

“Welcome to the St. Kizito School of Dar es Salaam,” says our host, Father Daniele, as we stand in the courtyard of the school, which is named after the youngest of the Ugandan martyrs. This Italian priest is a member of the clergy of the Archdiocese of Khartoum. His fluent Arabic enables him to communicate with the people of his parish in their own language.

“I belong to the Neo-Catechumenal Way and I studied at our seminary in Beirut. I’ve been living in Sudan now for more than 10 years” – a move he has never regretted, he tells his visitor from international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

“But it is an extremely difficult pastoral challenge for priests here,” he adds. This has to do more than anything with the life circumstances of his parishioners.

Fr. Daniele explains: “They are totally uprooted people. The parishioners here are for the most part come from the Nuba mountains in the south of Sudan. Their lives there were marked by the customs and traditions of their villages. But here, far from their homeland, they are completely lost.”

Many of the people many years ago came to the Khartoum area, in search of work or in order to escape the fighting in their homeland. But most of them can only survive as day laborers, and this eats away at the men‘s sense of self-worth.

“Many of them simply drift around idly when they don‘t have any work,” says Fr. Daniele, and many have no work at all. “In their traditional view of themselves, they are herders and warriors. But since there is no fighting no herding to be done here, all the work falls on the shoulders of the women.”

Unlike 90 percent of the Sudanese people, who are Sunni Muslims, the people of the Nuba mountains are Christians. There are often syncretic tendencies, with belief in magic rubbing shoulders with the Christian faith. For this reason Fr. Daniele attaches great importance to helping people grow in their faith. He says: “I want to show people above all that, despite their poverty, God loves them – and each of them individually.”

This is not always easy to understand for people imbued with a tribal way of thinking, he explains. But at least he has no concerns about church attendance. “The people come in large numbers to church. On Sundays our church is full,” he tells us.

“It is extremely important that the church be a beautiful and worthy place,” Fr. Daniele stresses, “as it is undoubtedly the most beautiful place in the lives of these people, who otherwise know only their own poverty-stricken huts and homes.“

Fr. Daniele has a particular concern for the children, and the parish school is his most important resource in this respect.

“Many of the children would spend the whole day roaming around the streets if they didn‘t come to us in school,” he explained. “Their parents show little concern for them. Attention, and even tenderness, is something most of them have never experienced, and above all not from their fathers.”
 
Fr. Daniele works hard to convey to the children a sense of their own self-worth. He says: “We want to show them that they are respected, precious people, loved by God. We do so by listening to each one of them and showing them respect.”

Precisely because the circumstances of the children are so difficult and their families so large and so poor – eight children or more is by no means unusual – the priest places great hope in the schools, saying that “however modest our means are here, without education the children will have no chance of a better life.”

Indeed, the Catholic school system is one of the pillars of the small Church in Sudan. For one Church official, who requested that his name not be used, the Church educational system is crucially important.

The official explains: “Our schools gain us acceptance among the majority Muslim community, and above all with the state. The state is strongly Islamic, but – because of the rapid population growth, the number of people moving into cities and limited public resources – its budget is overstretched and insufficient to provide enough schools. Hence, the government is happy to see the Church involved. As a Church we maintain almost 20 public schools in the city of Khartoum alone, and permission to build schools, unlike permission to construct churches, is something that is always granted to us.”

The schools are attended both by Christians and by Muslims. The Church official acknowledges that the quality of the schools is not the best. He says: “after all, we hardly have money for teachers and books, and nor do our students.”

But no pupil is refused admittance, even if he or she cannot afford the school fees. “For the children of the poorest families the school is the only possibility of bringing a little order into their lives,” the official stresses.

ACN is committed to support the Catholic schools in Sudan.

“The Church in Sudan has asked us for help,” says Christine du Coudray-Wiehe, who oversees ACN-funded projects in Sudan.

“It is an urgent necessity to respond, as the majority of the pupils are from Catholic families from southern Sudan,” she added. “It is vital for these families that are children be able to attend a Christian school – for this is the only way we can prevent them from being Catholics at home and Muslims at school.”

Oliver Maksan writes for Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy See, providing assistance to the suffering and persecuted Church in more than 140 countries. www.churchinneed.org (USA);www.acnuk.org (UK);www.aidtochurch.org (AUS); www.acnireland.org (IRL);www.acn-aed-ca.org (CAN)

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