All over Africa, Christians are increasingly threatened as Islamist groups become ever more aggressive and violent. Mozambique is a relatively new arena for their operations.
Christians, mostly Roman Catholics, constitute 59% of Mozambique’s population; Muslims comprise 19%. However, the Islamic State (ISIS) has begun to step up operations in the country’s gas-rich northeast, where the Muslim population is largely concentrated.
For more ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in Mozambique, see here.
“Nun Murdered in ISIS Attack in Mozambique,” International Christian Concern, September 22, 2022:
09/22/2022 Mozambique (International Christian Concern) – Inacio Saure, the Archbishop of Nampula and President of the Episcopal Conference of Mozambique, delivered a speech on Monday, September 19, addressing the rise in jihadist violence in Mozambique.
In the address, Archbishop Saure lamented the death of a nun who was murdered in a recent terror attack. On September 16, a group of ISIS-affiliated militants stormed a Catholic mission compound in the Mozambique city of Chipene. The gunmen set fire to the church, the hospital, and the schools there.
While most of the nuns and other inhabitants were able to flee, one sister, an Italian nun named Maria De Coppi, was fatally shot in the head as she ran towards a dormitory where it is believed that students were hiding. She was 83 years old and spent 59 years serving the people of Mozambique.
The archbishop described Maria De Coppi as a martyr of the war against the insurgency in northern Mozambique.
ICC reported previously on the “war on terror” that Mozambique’s central government has been waging since 2017 against the ISIS-affiliated group Al-Shabaab.
A new offensive launched this summer by Mozambique’s Islamic extremist rebels in the war-torn northern province of Cabo Delgado has increased the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the region by 80,000, bringing the total up to more than 800,000.
This undermines the central government’s recent claims that the insurgency had been contained. The rebels have expanded the area under their control during the two-month campaign, which began in June….
