Middle East – Africa

Jos, Nigeria, Apr 26, 2018 / 03:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At least 19 people, including two priests, were killed on Tuesday when nomadic cattle farmers in central Nigeria opened fire at morning Mass in a Catholic parish.

Reports indicated that Fulani herdsmen attacked Saint Ignatius Church in Ayar-Mbalom, a town within Nigeria’s Benue State, on April 24. According to officials, the herdsmen killed 17 worshipers and two priests: Father Joseph Gor and Father Felix Tyolaha.

After the attack on the church, the herdsmen proceeded to shoot residents in the area and set fire to around 50 homes, according to survivor Peter Iorver, whose stepmother had been a victim.

“The herdsmen came and opened fire on the church while morning mass was going on,” Iorver told New Telegraph, a local newspaper. “After they attacked and killed those in the church, they left and started shooting sporadically, killing residents around the area.”

“They burnt over 50 houses and destroyed food and farm crops as they retreated to their base. My stepmother was one of the victims; she was at the mass when the attack happened.”

The attack took place near Nigeria’s middle belt, where the Muslim north meets the southern Christian area.

While none of the attackers have been arrested so far, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari pledged to find those responsible for the shooting.

“This latest assault on innocent persons is particularly despicable. Violating a place of worship, killing priests and worshippers is not only vile, evil and satanic, it is clearly calculated to stoke up religious conflict and plunge our communities into endless bloodletting,” he tweeted. 

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>This latest assault on innocent persons is particularly despicable. Violating a place of worship, killing priests and worshippers is not only vile, evil and satanic, it is clearly calculated to stoke up religious conflict and plunge our communities into endless bloodletting.</p>&mdash; Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) <a href=”https://twitter.com/MBuhari/status/988799479632596993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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U.S. Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa, also decried the violence.

“Tuesday’s killing of priests and parishioners on the grounds of St Ignatius Catholic Church in the Makurdi Diocese signals that the religious violence in Nigeria is escalating,” he said. “It’s imperative that Nigerian authorities punish those who are culpable, lest violence worsen during the upcoming election cycle.”  

“Nigeria should explore justice system reforms that address grievances so that herdsman – the perpetrators of much of the recent violence – cease targeting farmers, exacerbating religious and ethnic tensions in the process,” Smith continued, adding that the creation of a religious equity commission would also be timely.

Violence between Fulani herdsmen and farmers has increased in recent years, as climate issues have pushed herders further south.

By mid-January this year, more than 100 deaths had been attributed to the herdsmen.

The Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria voiced grave concern about the violence in a January statement. They recognized the challenges faced by the herdsman, but expressed the need for better alternatives to open grazing.

“Government should rather encourage cattle owners to establish ranches in line with international best practice,” the bishops said.

“Farmers and herdsmen have a lot to contribute to the socio economic prosperity of our nation. A more enduring strategy must be worked out for their peaceful co-existence and mutual respect.”

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Benin City, Nigeria, Apr 23, 2018 / 12:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fr. Edwin Omoregbe, who had been kidnapped last week in Nigeria’s Edo state, was released on Sunday.

“With great joy in our heart, we want to inform you all that our priest, Rev. Fr. Edwin Omorogbe has been released from the hands of kidnappers,” read an April 22 statement from the Archdiocese of Benin City, according to the Guardian of Lagos.

“We thank you all for your prayers and pray that God continue to grant all our heart desires,” the statement continued.

Fr. Omorogbe, a parish priest at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Benin City, was abducted April 18 by unidentified gunmen near Egba, on the way from Uromi to Benin City. He was released in the afternoon of April 22. The local Catholic community had been praying for his release.

Babatunde Kokumo, the Edo State commissioner of police, and others led a search and rescue campaign for Omorogbe in the bushes of the Uhumwonde Local Government Area after his kidnapping.

The motive behind the kidnapping and the parties responsible are unknown.

Fr. Omoregbe was ordained a priest in 2003, and has studied in Canada.

Several priests and religious have been abducted in southern Nigeria in recent months.

Six women religious were held for two months before they were released by a police operation in January. They had been taken from Iguoriakhi near Uromi, also in Edo state.

An Italian missionary priest, Fr. Maurizio Pallù, was kidnapped in Edo state for a week in October 2017.

In Imo state, Fr. Cyriacus Onunkwo was kidnapped and killed in September of the same year.

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Freetown, Sierra Leone, Apr 17, 2018 / 04:23 pm (ACI Prensa).- In Sierra Leone, Salesian missionaries are working to extract girls working as prostitutes from their lifestyle, providing them with shelter and helping them to be reunited with family members or placed in adoptive homes.

In 2016, Salesian missionaries working in Freetown realized there was a large number of girls who were selling their bodies to get food.

“The youngest was 9 years old, and the oldest 17. Then the idea came up of creating a shelter as an alternative environment for them to help them get out of prostitution. They sell their bodies to earn $1.80 to $2.50 a day to pay for school because a lot of them go to school just like any other child,” Fr. Jorge Mario Crisafulli explained.

The Salesian priest is the director of their Don Bosco Fambul Center for the Protection of Minors. He recently visited several European cities to present “Love,” a short Spanish language documentary which shows the suffering of girls forced to prostitute themselves and who are rescued from the streets.

The priest has spent 23 years in Africa, and has been in Sierra Leone for three years.

“We have nine programs to help boys and girls living in difficult or emergency situations. Programs for those who have been abused, for Ebola orphans, and even a telephone hotline to take calls from children in a crisis. We are also present in the main prison in Freetown.” The Salesians also have “a bus used to reach out to children who live on the street and prostitute themselves,” he told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency during his brief visit to Rome.

Thanks to their tireless work they have already succeeded in getting 146 girls out of prostitution, although “to just save one, all the effort would be worth it.”

There are many orphans in Sierra Leone, owing to the country’s 1991-2002 civil war as well as a 2014 Ebola outbreak, and many have turned to prostitution as a way to support themselves.

Fr. Crisafulli said that  they have already reached out to more than 900 girls who live in this type of slavery.

“I always tell all the the social workers and the Salesians that they mustn’t forget that we are a Salesian community, that we are the Church and we are living out  the Salesian charism, which is to help the most vulnerable … Sierra Leone is a country that has suffered a lot, and our mission goes beyond what an NGO does; we are convinced that we are a religious community, doing a mission confided by the Holy Spirit to Don Bosco,” he said.

“I also tell the girls to not think they are trash or bad, as many people tell them, but that they are children of God. We absorb the pain, we travel the streets, and give that pain over to Jesus.”

“The love that we offer is that of transforming the pain of the cross into redemption,” he said.

That is what is shown in “Love,” a short documentary that tells the story of Aminata, one of those underage girls who succeeded in getting out of prostitution and has turned her life around.

The documentary seeks to make that reality known and to show how reintegration into society  is possible for these minors.  

“You don’t need prostitute yourself to eat, you don’t need to prostitute yourself to get an education, what you need to do is to look for a merciful hand which has no other interest than to do good and help,” Fr. Crisafulli emphasized.

“The social workers do a great job of listening,” he said, “so the girls are able to tell what they have gone through on the streets and why they are prostituting themselves and that is already liberating.”

“Then you have to heal the profound traumas that each one of them has. But it is also a spiritual work. Many of them have told me, ‘God had forgotten me’ or ‘God doesn’t love me.’ Our work also consists in telling them that that’s not true, that God still loves them,”  Fr. Crisafulli said.

It is important “to invite them to dream and find something to motivate them to get out of prostitution: going back to school, finishing high school, having a small business, or returning to their families,” he explained.

“It’s true these are not all success stories, because six of them have gone back to the streets, but we don’t throw in the towel. Our intention is never to give up, until we see them out of prostitution.”

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Damascus, Syria, Apr 15, 2018 / 03:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The airstrikes carried out by the United States, the United Kingdom and France against Syria on Friday constituted “unjust” and “brutal” aggression, the patriarchs of th… […]

Washington D.C., Apr 13, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Hospitals have become military targets in Syria, making it difficult to provide aid to victims of the country’s civil war, according to leaders of NGO and human rights groups working in t… […]

Abuja, Nigeria, Apr 12, 2018 / 09:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With 15-year-old Leah Sharibu still in captivity under the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram for not renouncing her Christian faith, Nigeria’s president has said efforts to save her are … […]

Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2018 / 12:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As President Trump considers airstrikes in Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed dozens of people, including women and children, Pope Francis has called for peace in the region.

President Trump has said that he will consider initiating military action against Syria within days. The president has sent several tweets hinting at iminent military action, but on Thursday he walked these back with a tweet saying he “never said” when the United States would be attacking.

“Could be very soon or not so soon at all,” said Trump, noting that the United States has done a “great job” at removing Islamic State militants from the country.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our “Thank you America?”</p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/984374422587965440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 12, 2018</a></blockquote>
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On Tuesday, Russia vetoed a US-sponsored proposal in the United Nations, which would have launched an independent investigation into the April 7 chemical attack. The veto garnered broad condemnation from US allies.

Russia has also said that its military will retaliate for any airstrikes against Syria, meaning that US-military action could prompt a large global conflict.

Since March of 2011, Syria has been engaged in a bloody civil war, with rebel groups engaged in conflict against the Syrian army. Syria, led by President Bashar al-Assad, is allied with Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia.

The situation on the ground in Syria has been disastrous for the country’s tiny Christian population. Prior to the start of the war, Christians made up about 11 percent of the population. Since then, many have been forced from their homes, particularly when the Islamic State was active in the region, and many of the country’s churches have been destroyed in the war. An estimated one-third of the country’s Christian population has fled.

However, many Christians in the country find themselves supporting Assad’s regime. In a March 2016 interview, Aleppo’s Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo said that he believed a full “80 percent” of the country’s Christians would support Assad in an election. Furthermore, the bishop said that the Syrian government was not actively persecuting Christians, and that Christians and Muslims had for years lived together peacefully prior to the start of the war.

The rebel groups fighting Assad are mostly Islamic-based and have attacked Christian villages.

There have been at least 200 reported chemical attacks in Syria, the medical care group UOSSM has reported. In April 2017, at least 70 people, including children, were reportedly killed in Syria by a deadly gas attack, reportedly perpetrated by Assad’s forces.

“The chemical attack in Syria on April 4, [2017], shocks the soul. The many innocent lives targeted by these terrible tools of war cry out for humanity’s protection,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said last year in response to that attack.
 
During his April 1 Urbi et Orbi message, Pope Francis prayed for peace in Syria.

“We implore fruits of peace upon the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria, whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war. This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course,” the pontiff said.

The pope condemned the recent chemical attack during Mass April 8 in St. Peter’s Square, saying that “nothing can justify” the use of chemical weapons on “defenseless people and populations.”

“There is no such thing as a good war and a bad war,” he said.

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Orange, Calif., Apr 11, 2018 / 03:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Algerian government has approved the holding of a beatification Mass in Oran for seven French Trappist monks who were martyred in the country in 1996, AFP reports.

“The beatification will take place in a few months, in the coming weeks, in Oran,” Algeria’s Foreign Minister, Abdelkader Messahel, told France 24 television April 10.

In January Pope Francis had authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to recognize the martyrdom of Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, men and women religious, who were killed in hatred of the faith in Algeria between 1994 and 1996.

Claverie was a French Algerian and the Bishop of Oran from 1981 until his Aug. 1, 1996 martyrdom. He and his companions were killed during the Algerian Civil War by Islamists.

The best known of Claverie’s companions are the seven monks of Tibhirine, who were kidnapped from their Trappist priory in March 1996. They were kept as a bartering chip to procure the release of several imprisoned members of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, and were killed in May. Their story was dramatized in the 2010 French film Of Gods and Men, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

The prior, Christian de Chergé, sought peaceful dialogue with the Muslim population of the area and provided employment, medical attention, and education to the locals.

Dom Christian accepted that the current political tensions and violent militias were a threat to his life. According to the Trappist order, he wrote a letter to his community and family, citing the peace felt giving his life to God.  

“If it should happen one day – and it could be today – that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church and my family to remember that my life was given to God and to this country,” he said.

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Gaza City, Apr 10, 2018 / 12:02 am (ACI Prensa).- In the past six years the number of Christians in the Gaza Strip has plummeted from 4,500 to just 1,000, due to the harsh conditions under which they are living, according to the pastor of the territory’s sole Catholic church.

Gazans “live like it’s an open air prison since we can’t leave. We can’t visit relatives, look for work, medicine or good hospitals on the outside,” Fr. Mario da Silva told ACI Prensa.

The Gaza Strip is a 141 square mile area, part of Palestine, located to the west of Israel and home to 1.8 million persons. Since 2007, it has been ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas.

Since Hamas came to power there, Israel and Egypt have conducted an economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, restricting the flow of persons and goods in an effort to limit rocket attacks on Israel launched from the territory.

Fr. da Silva, a priest of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, recalled that when he arrived in Gaza in 2012 “the situation was already very difficult. Over time, you would hope the situation would get better, but it’s only gotten worse.”

He related that inhabitants have only three hours of electricity a day, and there is a shortage of drinking water.

Most Gazans are unemployed, he said, and those who do work live on “about $150-200 a month.”

“It’s really a prison. People don’t have any money and the situation is terrible. There is widespread poverty.”

The harsh conditions imposed on Gaza has led to the exodus of Palestinian Christians.

“Every year Christians have one permit to leave and visit the holy places on Easter and Christmas,” and a many of them never return, explained Fr. da Silva.

In order to stem the tide, the priest’s Holy Family parish is working with 12 religious sisters, of the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, the Missionaries of Charity, and the Sisters of the Rosary congregations.

“We’re doing two things: first, preaching Christ and the importance of Christians in the Holy Land; preaching the importance of forgiveness and of carrying the cross is what we most try to do.”

The second form of aid is material assistance projects, he said: “For example, with the help of institutions such as the Pontifical Mission or the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Church tries to give work to more that 30 young people so they won’t leave, because they are mainly the ones who leave.”

He noted that the parish also cares for adherents of other religions: “The Christian community is very small and there are 2 million Muslims. They are also in great need. We have always opened the doors of our schools or our church during times of war to take in those seeking refuge.”
 

“There is not a very great persecution of Christians,” the priest said. “Though there is now a lot of fear with the news that the Islamic State has arrived, coming from the Sinai Peninsula, in Egypt … There have already been threats. There is also fear of the Salafist groups who are coming in from the south,” he said.

“In fact, when we have problems with Muslims who want to do something against the church, we’ve asked the government to protect us and they have done so,” he added.

The joy of Easter was tinged this year by a decrease in the permits given by Israel for Palestinian Christians to visit holy places in its territory, Fr. da Silva said.

“It was also very sad because Israel always gives permission for Christians so they can visit the holy places for Christmas and Easter,” but this year they only gave 300 permits instead of the 700 they usually grant. These permits were “for children and the elderly, who are really the people who can’t go out by themselves. Very few people actually went,” he lamented.

Nevertheless, “there was joy because Christ has risen and because our salvation comes from that, which is much more important than our material life; but on the human level it was a very sad Easter,” he said.

“Pray much for this, which is what we mainly ask for, because only God can change the situation we’re going through in these countries here in the Middle East,” he concluded.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Apr 9, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Armed men burst into a church meeting room in the North Kivu region April 8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and killed 38-year-old Fr. Étienne Sengiyumva, the parish pastor.

Bishop Théophile Kaboy Ruboneka of Goma, in North Kivu Province announced the news to the Vatican’s Fides News Agency

“After celebrating the Mass at Kyahemba, a district in his parish, around 3pm, Fr. Étienne was meeting with his parish staff, when an armed man, accompanied by others, entered the meeting room and shot the priest point blank in the head, killing him instantly, ” the bishop recounted.

“The murder happened so quickly that those present couldn’t take note of how many people had entered the room to kill Fr. Étienne,” he lamented.

The bishop also told Fides that ”it’s hard to know who is responsible. Our region is infested with armed groups, at least 15, that fail to be dismantled despite the constant presence of the army and the blue-helmeted UN soldiers.”

Bishop Ruboneka explained that “Fr. Étienne  is the third priest killed in the region” and that “the investigations to find those responsible for these deaths go nowhere. On our part, we are doing everything we can to identify Fr.  Étienne’s killers, even though we have no illusions.”

“In these cases the witnesses fear for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones and it would be hard for them to offer any information useful for the investigation,” he pointed out.

The bishop also stated that Fr. Célestin Ngango was kidnapped from the diocese after celebrating Easter Mass. He was later released, blindfolded, at around 3 am following heavy pressure from the local inhabitants. The Congolese bishops’ conference told Fides “the freed priest was not mistreated and he appears to be in good health. However, he will undergo a medical examination.”

Bishop Ruboneka does not think there is any connection between the two incidents.

“I repeat, in our region there are so many armed groups that it is hard to know who committed this act or another. Here in North Kivu we are living in total chaos,” Bishop Ruboneka said.

In conclusion the prelate stressed that “the situation of the Diocese of Goma, as well as Butembo-Beni, is unbelievable. We are completely abandoned by everyone and we live thanks to the grace of Providence. I ask the faithful of the Universal Church to pray for our region so we can again find peace.”

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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