I wonder if the increase in attacks against churches in the United States — and now with the Dobbs decision — will make places like Nigeria seem a little less foreign to us. Over the weekend, two priests were killed there in two separate attacks. This has become commonplace there. As Tom Farr at the Religious Freedom Institute put it in a speech this week in Washington, D.C., the violence is not about climate change, as some international voices have contended. It’s anti-Christian terrorism.
From one write-up by Inés San Martín, who is a consistent voice for persecuted Christians around the world:
On Saturday, June 25, Father Vitus Borogo was murdered in Kaduna State, the same region where two churches were attacked a week earlier. The murderers are believed to be members of the Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram.
The 50-year-old priest served as the chairman of the Nigerian Catholic Diocesan Priests’ Association. He was murdered at a farm, during what the chancellor of the diocese defined as a “raid by terrorists.”
On Sunday, June 26, Father Christopher Odia was murdered after being kidnapped from the Diocese of Auchi, Edo State, in the southern region of Nigeria. He had been abducted on his way to Sunday Mass at St. Michael Catholic Church Ikabigdo.
He was 41 and ordained a priest in 2012.
According to Open Doors International, an NGO that tracks Christian persecution globally, in much of northern Nigeria, Christians live under the constant threat of attack from Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Fulani herdsmen, and other criminals who kidnap and murder at will.
While all citizens of northern Nigeria are subject to threats and violence, Christians are often specifically targeted because of their faith — ISWAP and Boko Haram want to eliminate the Christian presence in Nigeria.
On Sunday, Bishop Matthew Kukah, of the diocese of Sokoto, complained that one of his priests and a religious sister who were kidnapped three weeks ago remain missing, and the people who took them are negotiating a ransom for almost half a million dollars.
“We are negotiating with the kidnappers as I’m talking because I don’t know how else to get back my priest,” he said.
Kukah noted that members of his family have been kidnapped and another one of his priests was killed by kidnappers, as was a seminarian.
“Somehow we like to pretend we have a government,” he said. “Of course, we have the apparatus of government, we have the scaffolding, but this scaffolding is important because people can see access to and appropriate resources of the state.”
I recently talked with Stephen Rasche for a National Review Institute/Religious Freedom Institute virtual event. (Steve and I are both fellows at the Religious Freedom Institute.) Steve is basically special ops for religious liberty — an American who has been a chief aid to Archbishop Warda in Erbil in Iraq, helping build a future for people who had to flee ISIS and wound up in Warda’s care — and now is focusing much of his time in Nigeria, where he is a visiting scholar at the Kukah Centre in Abuja. The occasion for our conversation was the Pentecost Sunday massacre at St. Francis Xavier Church in Owo, Nigeria.
Unfortunately, we knew the conversation would remain timely. You can listen/watch here:
And note: He warns at one point that attacks on churches are a calling card for coming persecution. We should not take what’s happening here lightly. And pray for Nigeria.