Although numbers haven’t changed sub-stantially from the previous year, 2022 was the worst year for Christians worldwide, due to an intensifying level of violence discrimi-nation and exclusion, according to the late-st World Watch List released by Open Doors, a watchdog group that advocates for Christians.
The report, which was presented on Wednesday at the Italian Parliament in Rome, ranks the fifty countries where Christians face the worst persecution.
According to the data reported, more than 360 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. Similar numbers were recorded last year. However, the score of the indicators in the fifty countries at risk is growing.
In the previous report, the Pyongyang had been replaced by Afghanistan, following the Talebani takeover in August  2021. The latter’s ranking has dropped to the ninth  place, not because of any improvement, but for the simple reason that most Christians present there have fled the country. Conversion from Islam to another faith is punished with death in Afghanistan. The tiny local Christian community is,  therefore, forced to live in clandestinity.
North Korea is followed by Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Lybia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Iran,  all of  which are facing either war or internal strife,  or are under authoritarian regimes, as in the case of Eritrea and Iran..
In terms of absolute numbers Christians killed in 2022 have slightly decreased from 5,621 to 5,898.  Also, the number of churches attacked or closed decreased by more than half from over five thousand in 2021 to just over two thousand last year. China has played major role in this cutback, with one thousand incidents against three thousand in the previous year.
On the other hand, however, 2022 has seen a drastic increase in abductions of Christians, from 3,829 to 5,259. Almost five thousand are concentrated in three countries: Nigeria, Mo-zambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where in recent days Islamists have claimed a bomb attack against a Pentecostal church in the eastern Congolese town of Ka-sindi, which killed 14 people and injured 39.