By Robert Royal
Today it is common to lament the widespread loss of trust in institutions: governments, schools, universities, courts, medical authorities, religions and—not least—the Catholic Church. There are many reasons, good and bad, for this loss of faith. In most cases, it is simply the reaction to institutions that have stopped fulfilling their function. Sometimes, the failures are so absurd that one feels tempted to surrender to them.
The Catholic Church lost much of its credibility as a result of the sexual abuse crisis. Although it has been unfairly criticized compared to other institutions—like public schools—that have similar or even worse records without damaging their reputation, the humiliation was a wake-up call. Or it would have been, if the entire Church had adopted effective remedies for this very real problem. And yet, inexplicably we continue to see famous priests, like Marko Rupnik, S.J., accused of shocking abuses and blasphemies, who continue active in the ministry. As do others.
And on a less scandalous level, consider the recent controversy over Cardinal Parolin’s statements regarding the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. A spokesperson for Aid to the Church in Need, which last week published a report on the persecution of Catholics around the world, defended the cardinal’s claim that Nigerian Catholics are often victims of social, not religious, conflicts. She said it was an off-the-cuff observation, meant only to acknowledge the complexity of the situation.
Perhaps that’s the case, but it is precisely in what a person with high responsibility—Parolin is the Vatican Secretary of State—says almost at random that much is revealed. (A “Freudian slip,” if you will.) Part of the trust we have—or don’t—in someone’s judgment depends on their ability to properly gauge the proportions of the facts in complex situations.
Parolin was right to say that there are other causes besides religious antagonism in the murders of Christians in Nigeria. In particular, the competition for land between Muslim Fulani herders and Christian farmers. But that is a minimal part of the problem. (The occasional Vatican explanation that “climate change” motivates bad actors also belongs in this category.) It is true that even some “moderate” Muslims are attacked by radical Islamists in Nigeria.
But drawing attention to this secondary detail, when some 8,000 Christians have been murdered—mostly by radical Islamists precisely because of their faith—only since the beginning of 2025, seems like an almost deliberate unwillingness to name the real problem.
The persecution and martyrdom of Nigerian Christians is so grave that even the Washington Post, decidedly secular and progressive, recently invited me to write an opinion piece (see here). Don’t miss the comments if you need more proof of how many Americans, lately, have completely lost their judgment.
I myself wrote about the conflicts between herders and farmers and attacks on moderate Muslims in my book The Martyrs of the New Millennium, but let’s get to the essentials:
According to Open Doors, 4,998 Christians died in Nigeria in 2023; “more people were killed for their Christian faith than in all other places in the world combined.” Between 2019 and 2023, 33,000 Christians of various denominations and several thousand moderate Muslims were killed by Islamic extremists belonging to Boko Haram, Fulani militants (formerly simple Muslim herders involved in land disputes with Christians) and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others. Over a longer period (2009–2021), the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety)—a Nigerian watchdog group—documented 43,000 Christians killed, 18,500 “missing,” 17,500 churches attacked, 2,000 Christian schools destroyed, and much more.
Those herders certainly have very particular methods of obtaining grazing land.
The 2025 report from Aid to the Church in Need avoids diving fully into it, but finally acknowledges the truth: “According to traditional leaders and international organizations, incidents in the Middle Belt are not random attacks, but part of an ethnic and religious cleansing campaign.” (Emphasis added.)
Why so much hesitation in the face of the worst persecution of Christians in the world? The answer seems to be the fear of recognizing that Islam, from its origin, has been a militant movement that expanded into Christian lands through conquest, and that it still tries to do so today. Certainly, some Muslims believe in “live and let live,” or at least in biding their time, as their founder did. But of the three “religions of the Book,” only Islam retains numerous adherents who consider it admirable to evangelize by the sword.
The Church in Europe—including, regrettably, Pope Leo—pretends that the Muslim masses seeking “asylum” in historic Christian countries pose no other problem than our lack of welcome, appreciation, and integration. This unrealistic view is being daily disproven by the rise of “populist” movements in all the major European nations.
European governments, for their part, fear recognizing the threat—and the growing reaction. They don’t know how to resolve the dangerous situation they themselves have created; they don’t want to confront their own failures (often justified in the name of “Christian humanitarianism”) and, moreover, they physically fear reprisals, given that there are assaults against those who dare to speak.
Parolin is not pope today for several reasons. His words about the Muslim herders diverted attention from the daily massacres of Christians in Nigeria, and add to his disastrous—and still “secret”—agreement with communist China.
The virtual abandonment of Chinese Catholics faithful to Rome is nothing less than a scandal. Why Parolin and Francis decided to sign an agreement that John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and previous popes firmly rejected will be one of the great enigmas that historians will try to unravel when they write the chronicle of the Church’s loss of influence in our time.
But beyond our spiritual, moral, and liturgical turbulence, it is already becoming clear that this may also have to do with the enthusiastic ecclesial welcome of illegal immigrants, LGBT groups, and even pro-abortion politicians, along with a relatively weak defense of the faithful people of God.
About the author
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. Among his most recent books are The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, Columbus and the Crisis of the West y A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.