A total of 17 Catholic missionaries and pastoral agents were murdered worldwide in 2025, according to the annual report published by the Agencia Fides, the information agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies. Among the victims are priests, nuns, seminarians, and laypeople, killed in contexts marked by violence, armed conflicts, and widespread insecurity.
The report opens with a reflection from Pope León XIV, who emphasizes that the Christian hope of these witnesses “is full of immortality, because their testimony remains alive as a prophecy of the victory of good over evil.” A statement that, according to Fides, summarizes the ultimate meaning of these deaths: they were not spectacular gestures, but lives given in everyday fidelity to the Gospel.
Africa, the most affected continent
Of the 17 missionaries killed in 2025, ten lost their lives in Africa, making the continent once again the most affected. Among them are six priests, two seminarians, and two catechists. Nigeria has the highest number of victims, with five murders, followed by Burkina Faso (two), and isolated cases in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Sudan.
In recent years, Africa and America have alternated as the regions with the highest number of missionaries killed, reflecting the persistent instability and the deterioration of security in wide areas of the world.
America, Asia, and Europe
In America, four missionaries were killed: two nuns in Haiti, victims of the violence from armed gangs that control large areas of the country, a priest in Mexico, and another priest of Indian origin in the United States.
In Asia, two pastoral agents lost their lives: a priest in Myanmar, brutally murdered in the context of the civil conflict, and another in the Philippines. The only case recorded in Europe corresponds to a priest killed in Poland.
Concrete stories of silent martyrdom
Among the names collected by Fides is that of the young Nigerian seminarian Emmanuel Alabi, who died during a forced march imposed by his kidnappers after the assault on a minor seminary. Also featured are the nuns Evanette Onezaire and Jeanne Voltaire, killed in Haiti by members of armed gangs, and the priest Donald Martin, the first Catholic presbyter murdered in the Myanmar conflict, whose mutilated body was found in the parish grounds.
These deaths, Fides emphasizes, did not occur for media prominence or extraordinary gestures, but in the ordinary exercise of pastoral ministry, amid poor and vulnerable communities.