Father Joseph Azubuike, a Nigerian priest who was kidnapped on July 10, has regained his freedom along with three other men travelling with him who were also taken.
Azubuike’s release, along with the three other kidnap victims, was confirmed to Crux by the Vicar General of the Abakaliki Diocese in Nigeria’s south-eastern Ebonyi state, Father Donatus O. Chukwu.
Chukwu explained that Azubuike had been kidnapped “in the evening hours of Monday, July 10, less than a kilometre from his rectory of St. Charles Parish, Mgbalaeze Isu, Onicha Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Southeast Nigeria. He was returning from a pastoral engagement when the incident happened. They were taken into a forest.”
The kidnappers demanded a 50 million Naira ransom (roughly US $66,000) or Azubuike would be killed, Chukwu said.
In a report titled, “The Economics of Nigeria’s Kidnap Industry,” the research firm SBM Intelligence estimated that between July 2021 and June 2022, no fewer than 3,420 people were abducted across Nigeria, with 564 others killed in violence associated with abductions.
Daily Archives: July 28, 2023
Dictatorship in Nicaragua freezes fund for retired priests
In a new attack against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, the dictatorship of President Da-niel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has frozen the Church’s retirement fund for priests, according to lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina.
The lawyer is the author of the report “Nicaragua: A Perse-cuted Church?”, which catalogs the more than 500 attacks against the Church in the country since 2018.
“Elderly priests are not re-ceiving their pensions from the national insurance fund for priests, the product of years of contributing, due to the bank accounts of the Catholic Church being blocked,” Molina wrote on the social media site X
“The national insurance fund for priests is an institution that was created more than 20 years ago by the CEN [Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference] intending a retirement fund for priests. It’s not exactly insurance, because it doesn’t cover health issues or other Social Security issues. It’s intended as a retirement fund,” Molina explained to the Nicara-guan newspaper Confidencial Digital.
The fund receives $150 a year from active priests, parishes, and Church institutions in addition to what is collected on Ash Wednes-day.
Visa denials face applicants from developing nations ahead of World Youth Day
Officials of the Catholic Church in India have asked the government of Portugal to ease the process of granting travel visas for young people planning to attend the August 1-6 World Youth Day in Lisbon, in order to accommodate almost 1,000 Indians hoping to take part in the event.
Often dubbed the “Olympics of the Catholic Church,” World Youth Day is a massive gathering of young people from around the world launched by St. John Paul II.
Whenever the event is staged in an affluent venue, however, there are often difficulties in granting visas to participants from developing nations, out of concern that some youth will remain behind and become undocumented workers and residents.
In many cases, young people hoping to make the trip are also required to be interviewed by embassy officials, though in some parts of the world applicants have reported not being called for the interview despite repeated requests.
“We are facing a lot of issues and many rejections this time,” Machado said. “We are not even sure whether all registered will get a visa to travel.”
“They look for a guarantee that the visitors will return home” from a third party willing to assume the risk. “That’s very difficult to get,” Machado said. Over 1,300 groups comprised of more than 28,600 individuals from across the United States, will travel to Lisbon, Portugal, for the thirty-seventh World Youth Day (WYD) gathering with Pope Francis.
Manipur church burnings debated by European Parliament as Modi attempts to silence discussion
After 13 weeks of ethnically-based violence in India’s troubled north-eastern state of Manipur, the European Parliament in Strasbourg is holding an emergency debate.
But opposition to holding votes on the resolutions has come from India, through lobbyists employed in Europe by the Hindu nationalist BJP government of Narendra Modi.
“It’s actually extraordinary. It’s quite an unexpected development”, commented Caroline Duffield of persecution charity, Open Doors.
“What it is, they’ve tabled emergency resolutions on the Indian government’s handling of the security crisis in Manipur. And really, the language is scathing, the criticisms are profound”, she said.
Details of attacks on Christians sent to Premier Christian Radio in past days has put the number of burnings of church buildings, schools, seminaries and the homes of ministers at 564, since 3 May.
These amount to 263 churches belonging to the Kuki-Zo tribe, 93 Kuki Christian buildings and 238 churches belong to Christians from the Meitei ethnic group, which witnesses say were destroyed by Hindu Meitei nationalists.
Six political groupings in the European Parliament have tabled the resolutions, which will be voted on tomorrow.
A motion laid by Spanish MEP Miguel Urbán Crespo on behalf of The Left Group criticises the “authorities´ response” to minority groups in India, saying it “has stoked ethnic divisions,” adding that “political leaders and public authorities explicitly advocated hatred towards these minorities with impunity.”
“They’re denouncing the BJP political elite, for the use of nationalist rhetoric”, reflected Caroline Duffield. “So it’s an extraordinary resolution debate underway” she told Premier Christian Radio.
For the European Peoples Party (Christian Democrats), a resolution tabled in the name of Croatian MEP Željana Zovko and 12 others, “strongly urges the Indian authorities to continue to employ all necessary measures” to halt religious violence.