“We Christians are at risk of extinction and an attempt is being made to Islamize the whole country because controlling Nigeria means expelling Christians from all of West Africa”, said Father Joseph Fidelis Bature.
Yet official indifference to the plight of Christians still prevails worldwide. Please continue to pray that the eyes of governing authorities be opened, and that their hearts be turned, so that this global persecution, unparalleled since the days before Saints Constantine and Helen, be ended.
“Christians in Africa: ‘You have three days to go or you will be killed!,'” by Giulio Meotti, Gatestone Institute, June 30, 2019:
Persecution of Christians in the Middle East is now close to “genocide“, a UK-commissioned report just revealed. The same threat has also become critical for Christian communities in Africa.
Some say it began in Algeria in the 1990s, when 19 monks, bishops, nuns and other Catholics were killed during the civil war. Since then, in Nigeria, Christian faithful have been massacred in their churches; in Kenya, Christians have been killed in universities; in Libya, Christians have been beheaded on beaches; in Yemen, nuns have been assassinated and in Egypt, massive anti-Christian violence is prompting an exodus. It is the new African archipelago of persecution.
Distressingly, these Christians have been finding themselves in the blind spot of the West: they are “too Christian” to get the Left’s attention, but too far away for the Right. Africa’s Christians are orphans. They have no “allies”, John O’Sullivan writes.
Christian families recently fled the city of Diffa, in Niger, after Boko Haram delivered the message: “You have three days to go or you will be killed!”. “There is no Christian anymore in this town”, someone reported to the non-governmental organization, the Barnabas Fund. The town, Arbinda, is in Burkina Faso. Numbers are telling: 82 pastors, 1,145 Christians and 151 households have fled from violence in the Muslim-majority nation. Just in the last few weeks, several of the Christian faithful and clergy have been murdered. Jihadists killed six Christians in a Catholic church in the town of Dablo. A pastor was murdered in an attack in Silgadji, Catholic parades have been targeted.
Jihadists apparently want to “cleanse” these areas of Christians — and they are succeeding. “There is an atmosphere of panic in the town,” the mayor of Dablo, Ousmane Zongo, said. “People are holed up in their homes, nothing is going on. The shops and stores are closed. It’s practically a ghost town”.
In Nigeria, attacks on Christians never stop. The country has become a “war zone for Christians“.
“The attacks on Christians are growing more flagrant and more aggressive,” Father John Bakeni from the Maiduguri Diocese, northern Nigeria, said. “We consider each day we live in safety a blessing because we do not know what will happen the next day”.
“We Christians are at risk of extinction and an attempt is being made to Islamize the whole country because controlling Nigeria means expelling Christians from all of West Africa”, said Father Joseph Fidelis Bature, a Catholic priest in the Nigerian diocese of Maiduguri, in the Italian monthly Tempi…
Read the rest here.
