Father Leo Raphael Ozigi, who was kidnapped in Nigeria’s Minna diocese on March 27, 2022. / Courtesy photo.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 29, 2022 / 04:25 am (CNA).
A Catholic priest of the Diocese of Minna in Nigeria was among 45 people kidnapped after Mass on Sunday.
The Nigeria Catholic Network reported that on the morning of March 27, assailants abducted villagers along with Father Leo Raphael Ozigi, a priest of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in the town of Sarkin Pawa.
Father Emeka Amanchukwu, the diocesan chancellor, confirmed to ACI Africa, CNA’s partner agency, that Ozigi had been kidnapped.
Amanchukwu said in a letter to the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria that “the unfortunate incident occurred when the priest was returning to his place of residence in Christ the King Parish, Gwada, after the celebration of the Holy Mass in his parish, St. Mary’s Parish, Sarkin Pawa.”
Gwada is about 40 miles to southwest of Sarkin Pawa. Both towns are located in the central Nigerian state of Niger.
“Kindly assist us to inform our bishops and priests about the ugly incident and our request for prayers and the celebration of the Holy Mass for the safe release of Rev. Father Raphael Leo by the abductors,” Amanchukwu said.
“At the same time,” he continued, “assist us with prayers for the safe release of our numerous brothers and sisters who have been held hostage by the rampaging bandits attacking communities and villages in Niger State.”
A March 28 news report from Sahara Reporters said that 44 villagers were also kidnapped during the two-day attack. The people abducted were reportedly villagers who had just returned to their communities on Saturday after living in Internally Displaced Persons camps.
“We entrust Father Leo and other captives to the Maternal Intercessions and Protection of Mary Mother of Mercy,” Amanchukwu said. “May the Holy Spirit secure the release of our brother, Father Raphael Leo, from the hands of the bandits. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with an almost even divide between Christians and Muslims. Nigeria’s Christians, especially in the northern part of the country, have for the past several decades been subjected to killings, kidnappings and property destruction, often at the hands of Islamic extremist groups.
Part of the problem, Nigerian Christians have told CNA, is that the Muslim-controlled government has largely responded slowly, inadequately, or not at all to the problem of Christian persecution.
Nigeria has experienced further insecurity since 2009, when the Boko Haram insurgency began, aiming to turn the country into an Islamic state.
For more than 10 years, Boko Haram, one of the largest Islamist groups in Africa, has organized terrorist attacks on religious and political groups, as well as civilians.
The situation has been further complicated by the violence of Fulani herdsmen, a Muslim ethnic group that was responsible for the most killings in Nigeria last year, having murdered an estimated 1,909 Christians in the first 200 days of 2021.
Across Nigeria, at least 60,000 Christians were killed in the past two decades. An estimated 3,462 Christians were killed overall in the first 200 days of 2021, or 17 per day, according to a new study.
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Catholic Archbishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Jos marches alongside evangelical leader Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam in front of the Plateau state governor’s office building in Jos, Nigeria, Jan. 8, 2024. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, photo by Plateau State Government Media Team.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 9, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).
Thousands of Christians rallied yesterday in front of the governor’s office in Nigeria’s Plateau state to demand action after more than 200 were killed in a series of Christmas massacres.
The attacks, which targeted Christian villages beginning Dec. 23 and continuing through Christmas day, left Christian communities in Nigeria’s Plateau state reeling. Photos obtained by CNA after the attack showed villagers burying their slain relatives and loved ones in mass graves.
According to Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, an evangelical leader who helped to organize the rally, the attacks also left 15,000 people displaced without homes.
Among the demands being made by the protestors, Para-Mallam said that they asked for an “urgent humanitarian relief material response by the state and federal government” and for the arrest of the perpetrators of the Christmas massacre, which he called a “genocidal,” “terrorist” attack.
Thousands of Christians peacefully and prayerfully march to a rally in front of the Nigerian Plateau state governor’s office building in protest of the 2023 Christmas massacre that left over 200 Christian Nigerians dead, Jan. 8, 2024. Credit: Photo courtesy of Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, photo by Plateau State Government Media Team.
The attack marks the latest instance of terrorists targeting Christian Nigerians on significant Christian feast days. In 2022, on Pentecost Sunday, 39 Catholic worshippers were killed at the St. Francis Xavier Owo Catholic Parish in Ondo Diocese.
Religious freedom advocates believe that militant Muslim Fulani herdsmen were responsible for the Christmas attacks. In Nigeria as a whole, at least 60,000 Christians have been killed in the past two decades. An estimated 3,462 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the first 200 days of 2021, or 17 per day, according to a new study.
Due to continued attacks, Nigeria is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian, according to a 2023 report by the advocacy group International Christian Concern.
Para-Mallam told CNA that Nigeria’s middle belt region, of which Plateau state is a part, has “suffered sustained attacks for over a decade now with destruction of lives and properties.”
The thousands of protestors at the rally, he said, were “mournful, angry, but surprisingly joyful.”
Their “central objective,” he explained, was “to ask for an end to the killings not just in Plateau but Nigeria and seek justice for the people.”
Just-In: CAN Plateau State Chapter is having a Peaceful Walk to Government House pic.twitter.com/YbFRqtFI9J
“Above all, it was very peaceful and prayerful,” he added. “The old, the young all together felt that we had to do what we had to do to get our message across.”
According to Para-Mallam, the crowd numbered about 5,000 and included both Catholics and Protestants. Together, he said, they peacefully and prayerfully marched, ending in front of the governor’s office building in the city of Jos. Archbishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Jos and several Catholic priests also took part in the march and rally, according to Para-Mallam.
The demonstration was “mournful, angry, and surprisingly joyful,” according to Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam. Credit: Photos by Nigerian multimedia journalist Jœy Shèkwônúzhïbó, used with permission.
The rally was organized with the help of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), a coalition of Nigerian Christian Churches and groups that includes the Catholic Church in Nigeria.
Para-Mallam said the purpose of the demonstration was to “mourn in solidarity” with the devastated communities as well as to show them that the Church “cares” and “identify with them in the moment of suffering and mourning.”
A secondary purpose for the rally, Para-Mallam said, was to “get the Church on the Plateau to unite and to speak with one voice around the issues of social justice” and to “create awareness nationally and globally about the Christmas season attack.”
Para-Mallam said that Plateau’s governor, Caleb Mutfwang, addressed the crowds at the rally and was “sympathetic and understanding and spoke well on the pains of his people.”
Mutfwang condemned the attacks shortly after they occurred in a Dec. 26 statement in which he said: “This has indeed been a gory Christmas for us.”
“He promised to relay our concerns to the president and committed to work with the president to end the killings in the Plateau state,” Para-Mallam said.
Despite the governor and president voicing their support for the impacted communities, several religious freedom advocates have been critical of the lack of government response to the growing terrorist attacks.
Maria Lozano, a representative for the papal relief group Aid to the Church in Need, told CNA after the attacks that tangible government support was largely absent after the Christmas massacre and that a “lack of response from the government” over the years has worsened the situation in the region. The absence of government support, Lozano said, has forced Christian churches to take on the “primary responsibility of providing assistance.”
Para-Mallam asked for Christians outside of Nigeria to help by offering prayer, advocacy, and humanitarian intervention.
“We also want fellow believers to encourage policymakers to encourage the Nigerian government to do more to end the killings in general and particularly those targeted at Christians,” he said.
For several years now, religious freedom advocates have criticized the U.S. government for failing to include Nigeria in the State Department’s “Countries of Particular Concern” list, which some consider to be America’s most effective tool to encourage foreign governments to address the persecutions in their countries.
“There is no justification as to why the State Department did not designate Nigeria or India as a Country of Particular Concern,” said U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom chair Abraham Cooper and vice chair Frederick Davie in a Jan. 4 statement.
Cooper and Davie mentioned the Christmas massacre as “just the latest example of deadly violence against religious communities in Nigeria.”
Speaking on “EWTN News Nightly” on Monday, Davie said that the decision to leave Nigeria off the list was “particularly” concerning and a “huge mistake.”
Davie told EWTN that “there are some who are saying that the government [of Nigeria] if it is not actively participating in some of this religious persecution is actually standing by and not doing what it can to prevent it.”
“We just believe,” Davie explained, “that by designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, the United States puts itself in a position to work more closely with the government of Nigeria to address some of those fundamental security issues that are going unattended to.”
Despite this, the State Department has left Nigeria off the Countries of Particular Concern list since 2021.
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London, England, Jun 19, 2018 / 03:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A relic discovered last year by a U.K. waste management company found a home Tuesday in London’s Westminster Cathedral.
“Choosing an appropriate resting place was very important to us,” said Enviro Waste Owner James Rubin in a statement on the company’s website. “Therefore, we think Westminster Cathedral is the best and safest place for the bone due to its importance to the church and to ensure that it won’t get lost again!”
Rubin presented the relic to Archbishop George Stack of Cardiff at the cathedral’s Lady Chapel June 19. Archbishop Stack is chair of the English and Welsh bishops’ patrimony committee.
The relic will be displayed in the Treasures of Westminster Cathedral Exhibition.
The bone fragment is encased in a wax-sealed case and includes an inscription that it is “from the bones of St. Clement, Pope and Martyr.”
St. Clement was a first-century Christian thought to have been a disciple of Sts. Peter and Paul.
It is believed that St. Clement converted from Judaism to Catholicism, and may have shared in some of the missionary journeys of St. Peter or St. Paul, and assisted them in running the Church at the local level.
Around the year 90, he was raised to the position of Pope, following Peter, Linus, and Cletus. His writings reveal much about the early Church, but little about his own life.
According to one account, he died in exile during the reign of the Emperor Trajan, who purportedly banished Clement to Crimea and had him killed in retaliation for evangelizing the local people, around the year 100. He is among the saints mentioned in the Roman Canon.
In 868, the Greek missionary St. Cyril claimed to have recovered St. Clement’s bones.
Enviro Waste conducted public research before deciding what to do with the relic. They posted about it on their website blog in April, requesting input from viewers.
“650+ suggestions and over 9,000 visits to the page” later, the updated post said, they decided that the Westminster Cathedral in London should have it.
The relic’s owner has said it was stolen from his car when it was broken into, and agreed to loan it permanently to Westminster Cathedral.
Vice Chair of the patrimony committee of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales Sophie Andreae was the one who reached out to Enviro Waste, requesting the relic’s placement be in the cathedral.
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