‘Hope and Closeness’ in the Holy Land: Patriarch Pizzaballa prays with Catholics on Mount of the Beatitudes

CNA Staff, Jun 8, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- A Christian pastor and his pregnant wife were killed on their farm in northeastern Nigeria last week, the latest victims in a series of abductions and killings of Christians in the country.

Gunmen shot dead Pastor Emmanuel Saba Bileya and his wife, Julianna, on their farm in Taraba, Northeastern Nigeria, on June 1, according to the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies where Bileya had been enrolled since 2014. Julianna was pregnant with the couple’s ninth child.

Bileya was a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria (CRC-N). He and his wife leave behind eight surviving children, and were buried in Donga on June 5, according to the Hausa Christians Foundation.

A statement released by the state police said that “While they were working on the farm, suddenly armed men came and opened fire on them, leading to the death of the pastor and his wife.”

The Hausa Christians Foundation called the killings part of  a “systematic, direct war against Christianity in Nigeria,” and said that “pastors, Christian leaders and seminarians are either being kidnapped or killed every week” in the country.

Taraba governor Darius Ishaku called the killings “wicked and inhuman” in a statement to the local newspaper This Day, on June 3. 

“Killings of this nature have happened too often recently in Southern Taraba communities and this is unhelpful to the on-going efforts of the government to achieve lasting peace among communities in the area,” said Ishaku.

“I sympathize with the surviving members of Pastor Bileya’s immediate and extended families as well as pastors and members of CRC-N in Mararaba where he served until his death.”

The attack is the latest in a spate of violence against Christians in Nigeria, largely from the terror group Boko Haram, militant nomadic Fulani herdsmen, and the terror group Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) and occurring in the Middle Belt and northeast regions of the country.

More than 600 Christians have been killed so far in 2020, according to a report on May 15 by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety). Christians have been beheaded and set on fire, farms set ablaze, and priests and seminarians have been targeted for kidnapping and ransom.

In January, militants kidnapped four Catholic seminarians from Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna and eventually killed one of them, Michael Nnadi. On March 1, Nigerian priest Fr. David Echioda was kidnapped by gunmen after offering Sunday Mass, but was released days afterward.

In an Ash Wednesday letter to Nigerian Catholics, Archbishop Augustine Obiora Akubeze of Benin City called for Catholics to wear black in solidarity with victims and pray in response to the killings and kidnappings.

As the number of Christians killed in the country continues to rise, local leaders have increasingly blamed government inaction to protect lives. The Intersociety report concluded that “atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked,” “with the country’s security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists.”

In March, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Abuja, Nigeria, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to address the violence and kidnappings in a homily during Mass with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria.

“We need to have access to our leaders; president, vice president. We need to work together to eradicate poverty, killings, bad governance and all sorts of challenges facing us as a nation,” Kaigama said.

On Feb. 27, U.S Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback told CNA that the situation in Nigeria was deteriorating.

“There’s a lot of people getting killed in Nigeria, and we’re afraid it is going to spread a great deal in that region,” he told CNA. “It is one that’s really popped up on my radar screens — in the last couple of years, but particularly this past year.”

“I think we’ve got to prod the [Nigerian President Muhammadu] Buhari government more. They can do more,” he said. “They’re not bringing these people to justice that are killing religious adherents. They don’t seem to have the sense of urgency to act.”

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CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- An Italian Catholic priest was freed Thursday two years after he was kidnapped by a jihadist group.

The office of the president of Mali announced Oct. 8 the liberation of Fr. Pierluigi Maccalli, a member of th… […]

Pilgrims on their way to Ugandan Martyrs’ Day on May 21, 2024. / Credit: St. Joseph’s Cathedral of Kakamega Diocese

ACI Africa, May 25, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).

One of Africa’s — and the world’s — largest religious gatherings will take place on June 3 in Kampala, Uganda, and one group from Kenya has already begun its more than 200-mile pilgrimage to arrive for the yearly event. 

Ugandan Martyrs Day this year will draw anywhere from 500,000 to millions of Catholics and other Christians from across the continent of Africa.

Pilgrims from the Nzoia Deanery of the Diocese of Kakamega are traveling to Uganda’s Namugongo Shrine, where the event takes place, bringing with them various prayer intentions — among them, “praying that more people may embrace, in faith and fidelity, the call of God in their respective lives,” according to ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa. 

Blessed and sent off on Tuesday, May 21, by Father Columban Odhiambo, the parish priest of St. Joseph the Worker Kongoni Parish in the Kakamega Diocese, the pilgrims will cover 18-25 miles each day.

In an interview with ACI Africa, Odhiambo said the intention to pray for the growth of vocations to the priesthood, religious life, and marriage was inspired by a May 11 priestly ordination, which the Kenyan Deanery hosted at St. Mark’s Nzoia Parish in the Kakamega Diocese. Nine deacons were ordained priests — seven for the diocese and two for the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (OFM Cap).

The long pilgrimage to Namugongo, Odhiambo said, “is simply a spiritual journey. The pilgrims have personal intentions, and some have been given intentions by their parishes” to be included in their collective prayer intention.

The Kenyan pilgrims, who are being accompanied by two priests, had an opportunity to participate in the sacrament of confession and Mass before embarking on their spiritual journey to Namugongo. Along the way, they will meet dozens of other faithful walking from the Kakamega Diocese and, together, about 150 of them “will sing, pray the rosary, pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and will go to confession,” Odhiambo told ACI Africa.

The priest said the deanery’s pilgrimage group of 19 is the largest number so far to make the pilgrimage. “Last year, we only had three,” he said.

The Namugongo Shrine in Uganda is one of the most popular sites on the northeast edge of the Archdiocese of Kampala. It is the site where St. Charles Lwanga and his companions were burned alive by the order of King Mwanga II of the Buganda kingdom. 

The Ugandan Martyrs’ Day dates back to the first decade of Christian presence in the East African nation when 45 men between the ages of 14 and 50 years old were killed between Jan. 31, 1885, and Jan. 27, 1887, because they would not renounce their faith.

Twenty-two of the martyrs were beatified in 1920 and canonized in 1964.

This article was originally published by ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, and has been adapted by CNA.

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