Fr. Hugo Valdemar Romero / ACN.-
Jihadist violence has struck Africa again with a brutality that should shake the conscience of the entire world. On September 15, in the village of Takoubatt, in Niger, armed men burst in during the celebration of a baptism and opened fire indiscriminately against the faithful. Twenty-two people died, including entire families who, instead of celebrating the gift of new life, found death bearing witness to their faith, thus being born also to eternal life through their martyrdom. The Tillaberi region, bordering Burkina Faso and Mali, has become an extermination field where Christians and other innocents pay with their blood the price of irrational hatred. Terrorism does not stop, and international indifference does not either.
If the situation in Niger is tragic, that in Nigeria is simply devastating. There, persecution against Christians has reached levels of genocide. According to the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), around a hundred churches are attacked every month and thirty-two Christians die daily at the hands of extremist groups. Since Boko Haram began its offensive in 2009, more than 19,000 temples have been destroyed or closed, and more than 185,000 people have lost their lives, of which 125,000 were Christians killed for their faith. The numbers are so chilling that they seem taken from an ancient tale, from a persecution of other times. However, it is today, it is now, it is Africa.
The director of Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi, has said it clearly: what happened in Constantinople or in Egypt, where Christian communities were reduced to a minimum expression, is happening in Nigeria. If urgent action is not taken, in a few years a Christian minority could remain in that nation which is today the most populous in Africa. And it is not only external violence: the State itself, with its silence and complicity, allows the radical ideology to advance unchecked, imposing terror and subjugation.
Faced with such a panorama, how is the silence of the world possible? How to understand that the international community barely reacts, and that within the Church itself, many ignore or are indifferent to this tragedy? We have learned to be moved by distant wars, like those in Ukraine and Palestine, and to mobilize for natural disasters, but we have closed our eyes to our own brothers in the faith, who die only for confessing Christ. The blood of the martyrs is watering the African land, and our indifference becomes a second wound that abandons them in solitude.
Persecution is not a matter of statistics, but of concrete people: communities that celebrated their faith and are massacred; parishes burned with the faithful inside; priests kidnapped; families forced to flee their ancestral lands. It is the suffering face of the living Church that experiences in its own flesh the mystery of the cross. And while they shed their blood, we celebrate the faith without remembering them, as if we existed in separate worlds.
The least we can do, and the first thing we are called to do, is to pray for our persecuted brothers. There is a Mass in the liturgy for persecuted Christians, unknown to many, that we should celebrate frequently in our communities. The universal prayer of every Sunday should include concrete supplications for them, so that no one in the Church can say they ignore their suffering. Let us not forget that we invoke the most holy Mary as “help of Christians”, let us pray that she be their shelter and refuge. Spiritual solidarity is the first form of communion.
But praying is not enough. We must also raise our voice, demand from governments, international organizations, and the Church itself that they truly commit to the defense of religious freedom and human rights. Prophetic denunciation is not optional: if we remain silent, we become accomplices.
The world needs to wake up to this tragedy. And the Church needs to remember that the blood of its children interpellates it strongly. We cannot continue living as if nothing is happening, while in Africa Christian communities are crucified and decimated. Their martyrdom is a mirror in which our lukewarmness is reflected.
They are telling us with their life and with their death that faith is worth more than everything, that the Gospel is not negotiated, that Christ is the precious pearl, the treasure, for which everything is given. May our communities, parishes, and dioceses shake off indifference. May we celebrate the Mass for the persecuted, pray every Sunday for them, pray the holy rosary for the persecuted, teach young people the value of witness unto blood.
And by doing so, not only give them consolation, but recover ourselves the passion for a faith that perhaps we have domesticated too much. Africa cries out, and its cry is the same cry of Christ on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. Let us not respond with silence. Let us respond with faith, with prayer, and with active solidarity.
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