News Briefs

House advances resolution to increase sanctions on Nigeria over persecution of Christians

February 7, 2024 Catholic News Agency 0
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

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 7, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has advanced a resolution to increase sanctions and pressure on the Nigerian government over the rampant persecution of Christians and other minorities in the country.

Sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, the resolution would call on the Biden administration to designate Nigeria a “country of particular concern” (CPC), a designation that comes with additional sanctions.

The resolution would also urge the administration to appoint a special U.S. envoy to Nigeria to monitor and report on incidents of persecution.

Smith and other proponents of the bill, including Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADF), maintain that adding Nigeria to the State Department’s CPC blacklist would be an effective means to pressure the Nigerian government to address the persecution.

Sean Nelson, a legal counsel for ADF, has previously told CNA that the CPC list is “the most powerful tool the U.S. government has to influence the religious freedom situation in other countries.”

For years now Nigeria has been recognized by religious rights groups as one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian. According to Open Doors International 4,998 Christians were killed in Nigeria in 2023, meaning that 82% of all Christians killed for their faith last year were in Nigeria.

In late January, Nigerian Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi told CNA that the persecution amounts to a Christian “genocide” in which radical Islamic groups’ goal is to “systematically” eliminate the Christian population from Nigeria.  

Despite this, the Biden administration has left Nigeria off the CPC list for the last three years. This year the administration’s decision to leave Nigeria off the list came just weeks after a series of attacks on Christmas left more than 200 Nigerian Christians dead.

“Following the Biden administration’s repeated failure to designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern despite widespread outcry, we are grateful to the members of Congress who are taking these vital steps to increase pressure on Nigeria for its egregious violations of religious freedom,” Nelson said in a Wednesday press release.

“No person should be persecuted for their faith, and it is imperative that the U.S. government condemn the targeted violence, unjust imprisonments, and egregious blasphemy laws that plague Christians and religious minorities in Nigeria,” he added.

Nelson told CNA that the resolution “lays out an undeniable case that Nigeria has engaged in and tolerated egregious, systematic, and ongoing violations of religious freedom, and some of the worst in the world, particularly for Christians in the north.”

If Congress passes the resolution, Nelson said he hopes the Biden administration would “listen and change course.” 

“More importantly,” he said, he believes the resolution’s passage “would send an immense signal of support for the victims of persecution in Nigeria themselves, who have asked for the international community to raise their voices and would put pressure on the Nigerian government to take the persecution seriously, hold attackers accountable, and free those who have been imprisoned and charged under blasphemy-related allegations.”

“There has already been a great amount of outcry over the lack of the CPC designation for Nigeria by the USCIRF and civil society organizations that focus on international religious freedom,” he said. “Having the voice of Congress echo those concerns would also give the concerns an international amplification that is sorely needed.”

According to Nelson, the Nigerian resolution will now move forward for a vote in the House. However, no date has been set for when the vote will take place. 

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The remarkable life and papacy of Blessed Pope Pius IX

February 7, 2024 Catholic News Agency 2
When Pope Pius IX declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary on Dec. 8, 1854, he had a golden crown added to the mosaic of Mary, Virgin Immaculate, in the Chapel of the Choir in St. Peter’s Basilica. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

ACI Prensa Staff, Feb 7, 2024 / 10:30 am (CNA).

On Feb. 7, the Catholic Church remembers Blessed Pius IX, “Pius Nono,” the 255th pope. His pontificate is the second longest in history — a total of 31 years, seven months, and 22 days (June 16, 1846–Feb. 7, 1878). He was beatified together with Pope John XXIII (now canonized) on Sept. 3, 2000, by Pope John Paul II.

The future Pope Pius IX was born Giovanni Maria Battista Pellegrino Isidoro Mastai Ferretti in Senigallia, Italy — then part of the Papal States — on May 13, 1792. His parents were Don Gerolamo Mastai Ferretti, a member of a local noble and prestigious family, and Donna Caterina Solazzi, who had him baptized on the same day of his birth. 

In 1809 he traveled to Rome to continue the studies he had begun in his native city. Even without a clear orientation toward the priesthood, he lived in an exemplary way, evidenced by some resolutions made in 1810 after a spiritual retreat when he spoke of his spiritual commitment “to fight against sin, to avoid any dangerous occasion, to study not for the ambition of knowledge but for the good of others, to abandon himself into the hands of God.” 

The future pope stopped his studies in 1812 because of an illness and was exempted from military service. In 1815 he was accepted into the Pontifical Noble Guard but had to abandon the idea because of health problems. Ferretti suffered from epilepsy from a young age — a condition that eventually subsided and then completely disappeared, according to Ferretti himself, which he credited to the intercession of Our Lady of Loreto.

At the service of God and the Church

Ferretti began studies for the priesthood in 1816 and received minor orders in 1817, the subdiaconate in 1818, and the diaconate in 1819. That same year he was ordained a priest. He celebrated his first Mass in the Church of St. Anne of the Carpenters, of the Tata Giovanni Institute, of which he was appointed rector — a position he held until 1823. 

Pius VII, who supported Ferretti’s early career, at first required him to have a concelebrant because of his epilepsy, but the requirement was lifted as his health improved. 

Ferretti had already left clear evidence of his personality: a man of constant prayer, consecrated to the ministry of the Word and the sacrament of reconciliation, always close to the most humble and needy. He knew how to combine admirably both the active and contemplative life. Very dedicated to pastoral and social work, he was also recollected and had an intense devotion to the Eucharist and to the Virgin Mary. 

In 1823 he left the Tata Giovanni Institute and traveled to Chile, accompanying the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Giovanni Muzi. He remained there until 1825.

On his return to Italy that same year, he was appointed director of the St. Michael Home, an important ecclesial work in Rome at the service of the community, which he reformed in an effective manner. At the age of 35 he was appointed archbishop of Spoleto. This was a very hard stage of his life given his youth and inexperience, and the immense responsibility that was placed on his shoulders. During his brief time, he also contended with an abortive political revolution, using his influence to secure a pardon for the misguided revolutionaries.

In 1832, Ferretti was transferred to another diocese — this time to Imola, where he continued to be revered for his preaching, his care of his diocesan priests, clergy, and seminarians, his support of education in the diocese, and his pastoral visits to prisoners. In 1840, at the age of 48, he was named a cardinal.

Under the sign of the cross

On the afternoon of June 16, 1846, Cardinal Ferretti was elected pope and took the name Pius IX.

During his pontificate, due to the political circumstances caused by the unification of Italy — the Risorgimento — and the loss of the Papal States, his task became extremely difficult. He is said to have faced the hard times with great wisdom and prudence. For this very reason, Pope Pius IX is recognized as one of the greatest pontiffs, forced to play a political role in times of open anticlericalism encouraged by “modernist” currents. 

Pius IX’s doctrinal work involved a programmatic vision aimed at addressing the main problems and threats to both the Church and Western Christian civilization: He condemned secret societies such as Freemasonry as well as fashionable ideologies like liberalism and socialism, among others. Pius IX published the “Syllabus Errorum” (“Catalogue of Errors”), in which he warned about the errors and dangers of modernism.

This made him the initiator of the development of the social doctrine of the Church. His century was marked by the Industrial Revolution and the struggle of the working class for better conditions — issues the Church would begin to address, most notably under his successor, Pope Leo XIII.

Among the most outstanding pastoral actions or measures of Pius IX’s papacy are the reestablishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England, Holland, and Scotland; the solemn definition, on Dec. 8, 1854, of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; the sending of missionaries to the Nordic zones of America and Europe as well as to India, Burma, China, and Japan; and the celebration of the 80th centenary of the martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul.

Pius IX convened the First Vatican Ecumenical Council, which began in 1869 and was suspended in October 1870 after Rome fell to the forces of Italian unification. During this council, the dogma of papal infallibility was defined. That same year Pope Pius IX declared St. Joseph patron of the Church.

Back home

After the fall of Rome and the subsequent end of the “temporal power of the pope,” Pius IX locked himself in the Vatican, declaring himself a “prisoner.” His action became an example of dignity and detachment from the temporal order for his exercise of religious freedom and firmness in the face of secular power.    

Upon his death on Feb. 7, 1878, Pope Pius IX’s impressive pontificate came to an end.

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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