Middle East – Africa

Cairo, Egypt, Jan 7, 2020 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt attended a Coptic Orthodox Liturgy Monday, praising cooperation between the Christians and Muslims of the country.

“God saw fit for us to live in difficult circumstances…. But as long as we’re together … no one can do anything to us,” the AP reported him saying Jan. 6 at a Liturgy celebrated by Tawadros II, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, at the Cathedral of the Nativity in Egypt’s new administrative capital, about 40 miles east of Cairo.

The liturgy celebrated Christmas Eve, as Christmas in the Coptic calendar falls Jan. 7 in the Gregorian calendar. Sisi has made a tradition in recent years of attending Liturgy for Christmas Eve among the Copts.

According to the US Commission for International Religious Freedom, Egypt’s religious freedom conditions “generally trended in a more positive direction related to high-level official discourse and actions” in 2018, while “persistent challenges at the community level and a poor, broader human rights situation remained consistent with recent years.”

In the past year, Sisi’s government has seen both a Coptic activist arrested on terrorism-related charges, and the sentencing of 30 men for planning to bomb a church in Alexandria.

USCIRF said in its 2019 report that Sisi has “heightened the inclusion of religious tolerance in public discourse” and has encouraged “the inclusion of churches in plans for new urban developments and calling for wider freedom of belief and worship.”

The commission also said that “the government’s initial effort to combat Islamist violence and ideology has evolved into a more general and severe crackdown on all perceived dissent or criticism toward the country’s leadership.”

Human rights activists in recent years have warned repeatedly that Christians in Egypt are enduring persecution and violence from Muslim groups, and the government has neglected to act.

The country has seen a number of attacks on churches in recent years, motivated in part by a call from the Islamic State.

Sisi has in the past deployed armed forces to help guard important installations and churches across Egypt.

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Juba, South Sudan, Jan 6, 2020 / 02:25 pm (CNA).- Bari ethnic leaders in South Sudan have distanced themselves from critics of the newly-appointed Archbishop of Juba. The archbishop has faced controversy since his December appointment for several reaso… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 3, 2020 / 03:45 pm (CNA).- Christian communities in the Middle East are likely to suffer renewed persecution in any instability following recent U.S. airstrikes, experts have warned. 

On Thursday evening Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, was killed in an airstrike in Baghdad International Airport, ordered by President Donald Trump. Also killed in the strike was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces, and Iraqi militia which has fought against ISIS. 

The airstrike followed an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and U.S. officials claim that Soleimani had planned additional attacks against Americans. 

Christian groups say that in the face of escalating conflict and instability in the country and region, focus must be maintained on the marginalized religious populations in the country. 

“General Soleimani and his Quds Force wreaked havoc on Christians and others in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria for decades. We pray his passing will mark the end of an era of terrorism and instability,” said Peter Burns, director of government relations and policy at In Defense of Christians.

But, Burns added, there are concerns that the region will become unstable, which could have “increased probability of counterattacks on religious minorities.”

“IDC is closely monitoring the situation to ensure that such attacks do not happen,” he said.

His organization is calling for the governments of Iraq and Syria to work to “ensure the safety of protesters who have already been targeted by Iran-aligned thugs,” and, Burns noted, Christians in these countries have protested alongside Muslims while seeking political and economic reforms. 

“Their right to gather and call for change should not be threatened by Iranian retaliation violence,” said Burns.

While it is unclear what the fallout of the Jan. 2 strike will be, many are wanring that Christian populations may be put at an increased risk of terrorism and other attacks. 

“Whatever happens next in Iraq, it is important that we not lose sight of the plight of the Christians in that country who have historically been disproportionately affected–and often directly targeted–in situations and upheaval and violence,” said Andrew Walther, Vice President of Communications and Strategic Planning of the Knights of Columbus in a statement to CNA. 

“The safety and survival of these communities, which were just recently decimated by ISIS’ campaign of genocide, must remain a priority,” said Walther. 

The Knights of Columbus has spent more than $25 million over the last five years to assist the plight of Christians in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria. 

Fr. Luis Montes, an Argentinian priest of the Institute of the Incarnate Word and a missionary in Iraq, told ACI Prensa that the attack is “quite serious,” but explained that there has not yet been anything “directly against Christians in this regard.”

Montes told ACI Prensa, CNA’s sister agency, that he was more concerned with the threat of instability in Iraq, which will “make life harder for Christians.” 

“The war affects us Christians more than others because there are fewer of us, we’re more unprotected” from the “the insecurity and violence,” he said. Most Christians have left the region, which further erodes efforts to help stabilize the country. 

“All this instability and violence is the perfect opportunity for violent people, for the terrorists, for interests outside the country interested in the country’s resources, and this is adverse to the population,” said Montes. 

Edward Clancy of Aid to the Church in Need also expressed concern about how the new instability would harm the Christian population. Clancy, who works as the group’s outreach director, told CNA that his initial reaction to hearing about the airstrike was “‘Oh no,’ but also hopeful at the same time.” 

“Terrorist activity will disproportionately affect the Christians. Not necessarily in the numbers killed, but in the numbers that remain. People will leave, because of lack of safety,” he said. 

“So right now, it is of utmost importance, whoever can provide it, give to the Christian community [a sense of] security,” said Clancy. 

Clancy especially highlighted the the Nineveh region, traditionally home to some of the world’s oldest Christian communities, where there is a lack of infrastructure and communication networks, and Christians are left “high and dry” in a “very difficult situation.” 

The community there is “very vulnerable right now,” Clancy said.

“We just have to be really, really vigilant about praying for these people, and we also have to put pressure on people in charge to make sure [the Christian community] is not forgotten.”

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Maiduguri, Nigeria, Jan 2, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- African Church leaders have responded to the reported Dec. 26 execution of 11 Nigerian Christians by a terrorist group affiliated with the Isamic State.

“We woke up a day after Christmas to the horrible news of the gruesome decapitation of Christian hostages by the Islamic State terrorists,” Fr. Benjamin Achi told ACI Africa Dec. 28.

Achi is director of communications in Nigeria’s Diocese of Enugu, where abductions targeting priests have been on the rise in recent months.

The priest’s comments referred to a Dec. 26 video depicting militants beheading 10 blindfolded captives, and shooting an eleventh.

The West African province of Islamic State, which broke off from Boko Haram in 2016, said the killings were revenge for the deaths of Islamic State’s caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and other IS leaders, who were killed by a U.S. raid in October.

The captives were taken in recent weeks from the Maiduguri area in Borno state, the IS claimed.

Achi said the December killings might portend even more Islamist violence in Nigeria.

“This latest development gives serious cause for worry, especially in the wake of the latest move by the federal government of Nigeria to throw wide the borders of the country for anyone who wishes from any part of the continent to come in without visas and proper documentation,” the priest told ACI Africa.

The priest was referring to new visa regulations in Nigeria, which make it easier for Africans to enter the country. The regulations have been widely criticized within Nigeria.

“We are indeed concerned that this decision would facilitate the influx of more of these terrorists from other parts of Africa into Nigeria,” Achi said.

“Christians in all parts of Nigeria have been apprehensive overtime and have seen themselves as clear targets of the endless acts of terrorism being witnessed in the country,” Achi told ACI Africa

On Dec. 28, Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments, tweeted about the Dec. 26 killings.

“In Nigeria, the murder of eleven Christians by mad Islamists is a reminder of how many of my African brothers in Christ live faith at the risk of their own lives,” Sarah wrote.

“These baptized are martyrs. They have not betrayed the Gospel,” they have not betrayed the Gospel,” the cardinal added.

In Nigeria, the murder of eleven Christians by mad Islamists is a reminder of how many of my African brothers in Christ live faith at the risk of their own lives. These baptized are martyrs. They have not betrayed the Gospel. Let us pray fervently for them. +RS pic.twitter.com/wU74GpJOtb

— Cardinal R. Sarah (@Card_R_Sarah) December 28, 2019

Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Nigeria’s Abuja Archdiocese sees the Christmas Day action by the IS as part of a continued effort to promote antagonism between Christians and Muslims in the country and region.

“They are trying to create a situation of war,” Kaigama told Vatican Radio.

“They want to see Muslims and Christians fighting.”

According to the archbishop, IS members hope that in the midst of the confusion, they might “have the upper hand and be able to destroy Christians, take over the country and even the neighboring countries.”

A version of this story was previously reported by ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Harare, Zimbabwe, Dec 31, 2019 / 03:12 pm (CNA).- As severe drought conditions continue in Zimbabwe, close to 7 million people are facing food shortages, a Catholic aid agency warned this week.

“Families have run out of options to put food on th… […]

Bamenda, Cameroon, Dec 30, 2019 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has promoted an African bishop known for his emphasis on family, community, and traditional values. In an announcement released on Monday, the Holy See Press Office confirmed that the pope has named Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya as the new Archbishop of Bamenda in Cameroon.

Bishop Fuanya, 54, has served as the Bishop of Mamfe, also in Cameroon, since 2014. He came to international attention during the 2018 meeting of the Synod of Bishops on young people, faith, and vocational discernment.

In contrast to the situation in many European countries, Fuanya said during the synod, the Church in Cameroon and in many parts of Africa is growing – including among young peoples.

“My churches are all bursting, and I don’t have space to keep the young people,” Fuanya during a Vatican press conference in October last year. “And my shortest Mass would be about two and a half hours.”

A 2018 study by Pew Research found that church attendance and prayer frequency was highest in sub-Saharan Africa and lowest in Western Europe. Four out of five Christians in Cameroon said that they pray every day.

Bishop Fuanya was born in 1965 and ordained a priest for the Diocese of Buéa, Cameroon, in 1992, at the age of 26. In 2013, he was appointed as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Mamfe, becoming the diocesan bishop the following year.

Fuanya’s new see, Bamenda, was erected as a diocese in 1970 and elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese by St. John Paul II in 1982. In recent years, the archdiocese has shown clear signs of growth and evalgelization. While the population of the archdiocese remained stable at 1.4 million people between 2015 and 2018, the percentage of Catholics rose from 29% to 42% during the same period.

During the Synod on young people, Fuanya credited the Church’s growth in Cameroon to the alignment between Church teaching and the values of wider society, and the strength of the family as a cultural institution.

“People ask me, ‘Why are your churches full?’” Fuanya said in 2018. “Coming from Africa, the family is a very, very strong institution.”

“We come from a culture in which tradition normally is handed from one generation to the other.”

Fuanya has also spoken about the need for the Church to teach unambiguously on issues of morals and sexuality, remarking during the 2018 synod that he would not accept any usage of so-called LGBT terminology in Church documents because “99.9 percent” of the young people in his diocese would “stand at my door and say, ‘What’s this?’”

“Our traditional values still equate to the values of the Church, and so we hand over the tradition to our young people undiluted and uncontaminated,” he continued, noting that a strong sense of community in the Church is something “very important that Europe can learn from Africa.”

In Africa, the newly-named Archbishop said, “there’s still a lot of things we do as community. That is the difference..”

“What we are trying to do in these small Christian communities is to fight the in-creeping of individualism,” he said.

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Maiduguri, Nigeria, Dec 27, 2019 / 10:54 am (CNA).- The Islamic State group in Nigeria released a video Thursday claiming to show the killing of 11 Christian men.

The Dec. 26 video shows masked militants beheading 10 blindfolded captives, and shooting… […]

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Dec 19, 2019 / 10:47 am (CNA).- Extremist attacks have risen dramatically in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, from 180 incidents in 2017 to more than 800 violent attacks in 2019, according to the Center for Strategic and Intern… […]

Mosul, Iraq, Dec 19, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- The Great Al-Tahira Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Bakhdida remains charred black inside, five years after the Islamic State plundered and set it aflame; however, in 2020 the Syriac Catholic cathedral will be restored as Iraq’s largest Christian community fights to rebuild and regain what was lost.

“It is a very significant church because it was built from the donations of local people, agriculture workers,” Fr. Georges Jahola, a parish priest from Bakhdida, told CNA.

Bakhdida, also known as Qaraqosh, is located 20 miles southeast of Mosul. Fr Jahola said that the local Christians hope that in the future their town will be referred to as as Bakhdida, the Aramaic and more historic name of their town, rather than Qaraqosh, a Turkish name that came from the Ottoman Empire.

The cathedral in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains was constructed from 1932-1948 as Catholic farmers donated each year from their harvest, the priest explained. The Great Al-Tahira served a growing Christian community, until the Islamic State turned the cathedral into an indoor shooting range from 2014-2016.

After Bakhdida’s liberation from the Islamic State in 2016, Masses resumed in the damaged cathedral as Christians returned to rebuild their community. Aid to the Church in Need committed to completely restore the cathedral’s fire-damaged interior in late 2019.

Christianity has been present in the Nineveh plain in Iraq – between Mosul and Iraqi Kurdistan – since the first century.

Rebuilding the 6,936 damaged homes in Bakhdida began in earnest in May 2017, and since then more than half have been completed, Fr. Jahola said.

The latest rebuilding statistics for Bakhdida divide the rebuilt homes into three categories: completed destroyed, partially destroyed, and partially damaged.

Of the 2,100 homes that were burnt and partially destroyed in Bakhdida, 818 homes have been rebuilt and 1,282 remain in need of repair. Thirty-two of the homes that were completely destroyed have been totally rebuilt, while 30 such houses remain. A little over half of the 4,774 homes that were partially damaged by the Islamic State in the city have been repaired.

“With the help of many NGOs we were able to rebuild many houses,” he said, noting the contributions of Aid to the Church in Need, Samaritan’s Purse, the Salt Foundation, SOS Chrétiens d’Orient, Malteser International, Fraternity in Iraq, and others to Bakhdida.

The Hungarian government office for Aid of Persecuted Christians announced in October a partnership with U.S. Agency for International Development to contribute to the rebuilding of homes in Bakhdida and Sinjar in northern Iraq.

“It is indeed the cradle of Christianity,” Tristan Azbej, Hungarian State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians told CNA.

“What we have partnered for is that Hungary would provide donations of local Syriac rite Orthodox Church to reconstruct close to 100 local homes and USAID will provide donations and provision of reconstruction of the market center for the local businesses of the town Qaraqosh Baghdeda,” he said.

Fr. Jahola told CNA that Bakhdida needs news jobs. “Young people have no work, so some of them go to Erbil or leave Iraq,” he said. “It isn’t easy. Also because Iraq now is in an unstable political situation.”

At least 400 people have died since anti-government protests began across Iraq in October.

Among the Syriac Catholic, Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean, Armenian, Assyrian, and Muslim commities in Bakhdida, there was one reconstruction committee that has worked together to manage rebuilding, Jahola said.

The Al-Tahira Cathedral was one of four churches in Bakhdida to be desecrated and burnt by the Islamic State: two Syriac Catholic churches and two Syriac Orthodox.

Fr. Jahola is the parish priest of the Syriac Catholic Church of Mar Behnam and Mart Sarah, a desecrated church that was renovated and rededicated on the feast of the Assumption of Mary this year.

“I think it is very important to support this town because it is the biggest symbol of Christianity in Iraq. Until now, we kept it as a Christian city, but we do not know what the future will bring for us,” he said.

An estimated 225,000 Christians remain in Iraq, according to In Defence of Christians.

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Beirut, Lebanon, Dec 14, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- As Lebanon’s economic crisis worsens, a Lebanese priest is asking for people to spiritually and charitably adopt a persecuted Christian refugee family this Christmas season.

“Imagine that for the last 4-6 years there were more than 2 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a nation that is only about 4 million people,” Fr. Andre Sebastian Mahanna told CNA. 

On Dec. 14, Fr. Mahanna’s apostolate, St. Rafka Mission of Hope and Mercy, will provide a Christmas dinner and concert for 4,500 families of refugees from Syria and Iraq at which 2,500 children will receive Christmas gifts.

The Christmas gift and good drive will be hosted by Chaldean Archbishop Michael Kassargi of Beirut. The mission will also provide 100 families with emergency medical insurance coverage through the Center of Our Lady of Hope Medical Center in Beirut.

“In this Christmas season, adopt a family in your prayer. Pray for a family so that a father and a mother who cannot afford food at the table, who cannot afford medicine for their children or for themselves, they cannot afford the livelihood of paying rent, pray for their concrete livelihood,” Fr. Mahanna urged.

With a $50 donation, one can “Adopt a Family” of refugees, which in turn also helps ease the burden on Lebanon’s infrastructure and helps “support the Lebanese people until the political situation and that human crisis of the refugees is settled,” Mahanna explained. 

Lebanon is facing a critical moment in which it risks becoming a failed state, Mahanna said. Anti-government protests forced the former prime minister Saad Hariri to resign six weeks ago, and the government remains billions of dollars in debt.

“The crisis has now drained the entire banking system, private investors cannot withdraw their money. If I have money in the bank, you cannot find the actual dollar currency in any of the Lebanese territories. The ATM machines are not giving money out to people, and you cannot go even to your own account and withdraw money more than let’s say $1,000 per month in some places $400 per month in other places,” the priest said.

“We need the help of the international community to maintain the stability, some economic foundation in Lebanon so that we protect the private investors, we protect the Lebanese citizens … in such a way that the government will not fall,” he said.

“If the government falls, you are going to have two fanatic groups, unfortunately just like what happened in Syria, just like what happened in Iraq, they will be on the rise and kill each other. As a collateral damage, Christians always pay the cost,” he explained.

Fr. Mahanna asked for prayers for Lebanon to remain a stronghold for dialogue and a model of coexistence between people from different religious groups. 

The St. Rafka Mission of Hope and Mercy’s Christmas celebrations will continue at epiphany when the mission will distribute gifts at the Bird’s News Orphanage in Byblos, Lebanon on Jan. 6, 2020.

The Syrian Civil War left an estimated 100,000 children orphaned. Gifts will also be distributed to the orphans cared for by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and the Ephraimites Sisters in Harissa, Lebanon. 

“I’m so proud of the churches in Lebanon,” Mahanna said. “They have doubled their attendance in the afternoon. They cook, they wrap sandwiches. We send as a Mission of Hope and Mercy on a monthly basis for the Christian refugees. We send 200 hygiene supply kits every month. We send 200 food boxes every month, and now for Christmas we send 2,500 Christmas gifts.”

“We stand in solidarity and in support with these people who really are in dire need,” he said.

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