Nigerians in the Diocese of Brooklyn are reacting to the news that as terrorist attacks and anti-Catholic persecution continue in their home country, their fellow Nigerians are attending church in record numbers.
Nigerians in the Diocese of Brooklyn are reacting to the news that as terrorist attacks and anti-Catholic persecution continue in their home country, their fellow Nigerians are attending church in record numbers.
The faithful of the Diocese of Brooklyn took time out during the busy days of Lent and the preparations for Holy Week to gather at St. Rose of Lima Church on April 7 and pay tribute to persecuted Christians from around the world.
Aggression against Catholic priests and religious — including kidnappings, imprisonment, and murder — is on the rise.
Church leaders around the world are pleading for the release of six women religious kidnapped in Haiti Jan. 19 and are urging the country’s government to crack down on gang violence.
Bishop Wilfred Anagbe, during a recent stop in Brooklyn, said massacres by Fulani herdsmen have continued in Nigeria, even as a new president has taken office.
A report issued June 22 by Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic international aid organization, said that religious freedom rights were violated in 61 countries, impacting more than 4 billion people.
As fifth graders Sienna Jeanty and Carolyn Tomaselli prayed the rosary with fellow St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Academy (SJWCA) students on Friday, Oct. 7, they were doing so with a special intention.
A vision of Christ helped give Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme of Maiduguri, Nigeria, hope for the eventual end of the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram, after the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in the remote town of Chibok in April 2014.
Some in the troubled African nation hoped Pope Francis’ visit would foster “reconciliation and peace.” But because of his ailing knee, the Pope Francis will send the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to Africa in his place.
The brutal attack on people at a Catholic church in Nigeria on Pentecost Sunday is “an attack on the entire church,” said a U.S. official of Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic charity.