Attacks on 26 villages in Plateau State began December 23, led by suspected extremists among Fulani Muslim herdsman against Christian farming communities. Some media reports cite nearly 200 dead, with many missing as local residents fled from gunmen into the bush.
Grace Godwin was preparing Christmas Eve dinner when her husband burst in with news from the neighboring village, ordering her and the children into the fields. Rebecca Maska similarly took cover but was shot and bled for three hours until help arrived, while her son had his hand chopped off with a machete before escaping. Magit Macham dragged his wounded brother to safety and hid overnight until the attackers moved on.
“These attacks have been recurring,” Macham told Reuters, having returned home from the regional capital of Jos to celebrate Christmas. “They want to drive us out of our ancestral land.”
For years, violence has plagued the West African nation’s Middle Belt, where a predominantly Muslim north intersects with a predominantly Christian south. Land rights issues are also contested, as seminomadic cattle herders press against settled agrarian hamlets in Africa’s most populous nation.
The Christmas massacres were the worst attacks since 2018. A local publication tallied an additional 201 deaths in Plateau State in the first half of 2023. Across the Middle Belt, at least 2,600 people were killed in 2021, according to the most recent data by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
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Bishop Gaspard Béby Gneba has called on the people of his diocese in western Ivory Coast to report priests who secretly have wives and families, as well as those who commit sexual or financial abuse.
“Any lay believer who knows that a priest is not faithful to his celibacy, has a wife or child, or has committed sexual abuse or economic crimes, must have the courage to report it to the bishop, otherwise, they commit a sin of complicity before God, the pope, and the Church,” Bishop Gneba said in an open letter to people of the Diocese of Man, which he read January 4 on diocesan radio.
“The pope speaks of zero tolerance for these priests,” said the 61-year-old bishop, a former seminary professor of spirituality and liturgy who has led the diocese since early 2008.
He said his message was “urgent, important, and necessary” and aimed at helping him in”the fight against sexual abuse, economic crimes within the clergy of Man, and the treatment of priests who have wives or children.”
After extensively reiterating these directives, he went on to discuss the “specific measures taken to transparently handle cases of sexual abuse or economic crimes committed by priests” in the diocese during his nearly 16 years at the helm.
“They must come to see me as soon as possible to submit their resignation,” he insisted, while deploring the behavior of some who “give the impression that priestly celibacy has been abolished or that continence is optional.”

Throughout 2023, more than 130 Catholic priests and religious were either arrested, kidnapped, or murdered, according to a new report on Catholic persecution published by Aid to the Church in Need.
The report published by the Catholic charity found at least 132 instances of arrests, kidnappings, and/or murders, which is slightly higher than the report from the previous year, which found 124. The uptick was mostly driven by arrests from authoritarian governments, which went up from 55 in 2022 to 86 in 2023.
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on political dissent among members of the clergy was a primary driver of persecution throughout the year. The report found that the regime held 46 clergy in custody in 2023, including two bishops and four seminarians. This included 19 clerics arrested in December, including Bishop Isidoro de Carmen Mora Ortega of Siuna.
According to the report, many of the priests in Nicaragua who were arrested before December were either released or expelled from the country and refused reentry. The government also released two of the priests arrested in December, but the other 17 are still in custody.
Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was arrested in August 2022 and sentenced to 26 years in prison after refusing to leave the country, is also still in custody.

The Vatican on January 4 moved to calm Catholic bishops in some countries who have balked over last month’s approval of blessings for same-sex couples, telling them that the measure is not “heretical” or “blasphemous”.
In a five-page statement, the Vatican’s doctrinal office also acknowledged that such blessings could be “imprudent” in some countries where people who receive them might become targets of violence, or risk prison or even death.
The fact that the Vatican needed to issue a five-page clarification of an eight-page declaration – little more than two weeks after it was issued – appeared to underscore the extent of the confusion it caused in many countries.
After the original declaration was issued, a number of Catholic bishops’ conferences issued statements stressing that the blessings did not amount to an official approval of gay sex or a sacrament of marriage for same-sex couples.
The doctrinal office, known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, stressed these aspects in its statement on January 4 , saying that blessings for same-sex couples should not be seen as “a justification of all their actions, and they are not an endorsement of the life that they lead”.
The office said it wanted “to clarify the reception of Fiducia Supplicans while recommending at the same time a full and calm reading” of the Dec. 18 declaration, which it said is “clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality”.
It added: “Evidently, there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or Blasphemous.”

A pall of gloom descended over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve as the Gaza war weighed heavily on the biblical city in the occupied West Bank and the usual crowds of pilgrims stayed away.
The traditional giant Christmas tree, marching bands and flamboyant nativity scene were all absent in the city celebrated as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
While there were few festive lights, a huge Palestinian flag was unfolded in the centre of town and a banner declared that “The bells of Bethlehem ring for a ceasefire in Gaza”.
Bethlehem usually throngs with pilgrims and tourists at this time of year. But many residents have fled and few visitors have come since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.
The bloody conflict was sparked when the Palestinian militants launched a deadly cross border attack on southern Israel, triggering a massive Israeli retaliation.

When asked to sum up the state of the American priesthood, Catholic University of America sociologist Brandon Vaidyanathan describes it as “fractured,” in that individually priests are doing well, but their assessment of the institutional Church “is not very good.”
What’s more, research conducted by Vaidyanathan and others has found that not only is there a striking deficit in the trust priests feel in their bishop, but there’s also a significant generational mistrust priests have in each other that relates to differing theological and political alignments.
“There’s a mutual distrust of each other that is driven by political differences, and so young priests view older priests with suspicion and vice versa,” Vaidyanathan told Crux. “The younger priests are more conservative, and don’t see the older priests as sort of a part of the same program.”
The insight became apparent to Vaidyanathan and other researchers in an analysis of data compiled for “The National Survey of Catholic Priests,” which was published in October 2022 by CUA’s Catholic Project. The survey, the largest of American Catholic priests in over 50 years, got responses from 3,516 priests across 191 dioceses/eparchies.
The survey also included interviews with more than 100 priests selected from respondents, and a census survey of U.S. bishops receiving 131 responses.
Among the findings were that priests’ morale is high and they have a strong view of their personal vocations, but a high percentage of priests expressed some level of distrust in their bishop, and young priests especially experience burnout. After first survey findings were published last year, researchers conducted a deeper analysis of the data, which was published in November in a report titled “Polarization, Generational Dynamics, and the Ongoing Impact of the Abuse Crisis: Further Insights from the National Study of Catholic Priests.”
“Since [the initial survey was published] we have analyzed the qualitative data from about 104 interviews that we did, and our team was also looking at other kinds of interesting findings, patterns, that seemed to be present in the survey data that could help quantify and give us a sense of the distribution of some of the things we were finding,” Vaidyanathan, the chair of CUA’s Department of Sociology, explained.

Catholic Bishops in Cameroon have added their voice to other Catholic Church leaders, who have prohibited the implementation of Fiducia Supplicans in their Episcopal Sees and territories they govern.
In a statement, members of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC) weigh in on the document that the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) released on December 18 permitting the blessing of “same-sex couples” and couples in other “irregular situations”.
NECC members take the stance that their counterparts in Malawi and Zambia have taken, barring members of the Clergy from imparting blessings upon “homosexual couples”, and term the DDF directive that such blessings be nonliturgical as “hypocritical”.
“We, the Bishops of Cameroon, reiterate our disapproval of homosexuality and homosexual unions,” they say, and go on to issue their directive, “Consequently, we formally forbid all blessings of ‘homosexual couples’ in the Church of Cameroon.”

Catholic bishops in Poland have ruled out the possibility of blessing “same-sex unions” but remain open to blessing individuals with homosexual tendencies, only if they are “living in complete abstinence” of sexual activities.
The Polish Episcopal Conference released the statement on Dec. 21, just three days after the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a declaration that allowed nonliturgical blessings of “same-sex couples.” The Polish bishops’ statement did not expressly criticize the Vatican declaration but appeared to conflict with the guidance contained within it.
“In response to the question ‘Does the Church have the authority to bless same-sex unions?’ the answer is negative,” the Polish bishops’ statement read, citing a March 2021 “responsum” from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“Since practicing sexual acts outside marriage, that is, outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open to the transmission of life, is always an offense against the will and wisdom of God expressed in the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue, people who are in such a relationship cannot receive a blessing,” the statement added. “This applies in particular to people in same-sex relationships.”

On a sunny morning at St. Benedict the African Catholic Church on Chicago’s South Side, the Rev. Rukulatwa Kiiguta stepped into the center of the sanctuary to preach.
“My brothers and sisters, yes, we do have this mission of saving souls by bringing them to Christ,” he told the assembly, looking around at the 50-odd people gathered in the Black Catholic parish, many of whom nodded as he spoke.
Kiiguta moved to the U.S. from his home in Tanzania for exactly that reason. After meeting an American priest who had traveled to East Africa to recruit seminarians, Kiiguta joined the ranks of about 15 African priests in Chicago. He sees his work in the Englewood neighborhood – where many families struggle to make ends meet, but Catholics pour their hearts into their parish – as God’s will.
This missionary’s story reflects a fundamental shift in the American Catholic church. After decades of U.S. missionaries traveling to Africa to convert and preach, the trend is reversing: Across the country, parishes now rely on the ministry of international priests, many from East Africa and Nigeria.
The Archdiocese of Chicago, one of the biggest American dioceses, is a case in point – almost two-thirds of its priests under 50 were born outside the U.S.
It’s difficult to estimate the number of foreign missionaries in the U.S. because their paths are so diverse. But recent studies by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) estimated the U.S. hosts some 6,600 international priests and more than 4,000 international nuns.
Meanwhile, the number of American priests is tumbling: there are 10,000 fewer priests now than there were two decades ago.
Sister Thu Do, a research associate at CARA, described the trend as “reverse missionary action.” She said the number of international priests and sisters has likely grown since the Georgetown center’s last study in 2019.
“Because of the shortage of vocations in the priesthood as well as in religious life, religious institutes and dioceses here in the U.S. go outside of the U.S. to recruit new members,” she said.

On this Sunday December 24, the fourth of Advent and Christmas Eve, Pope Francis urged the faithful at the end of the Angelus to be close at this time of celebra-tion to the people in the world who suffer from war.
“Palestine, Israel, and Ukraine,” he said this morning from the window of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, are places that go towards Christmas without peace. Let us “also think of those who suffer from misery, from hunger, from slavery,” he said.
Francis expressed hope that this may be a day lived “in prayer, in the warmth of affection, and in soberness. Let me make one recommendation: let us not confuse celebration with consumerism,” he explained. Instead, for Christians, the path to follow this Christmas is that of simplicity, “without waste, and by sharing with those who lack nece-ssities or lack companionship.”
This Sunday the Holy Father asked God, who “took a human heart for Himself [to] infuse humanity into the hearts of men!”
Before his address following the recitation of the Marian pra-yer, he greeted those present, “Romans and pilgrims from Italy and from various parts of the world.”
He singled out for a special greeting a large delegation of Italians in St Peter’s Square from areas “officially recognised as highly polluted and who have long awaited their clean-up.”
The delegation was accompanied by a long banner that read: “From the S.I.N. (Sites of National Interest), we demand justice, remediation, and a change in the protection of the environment and health.” “I express solidarity with these populations and hope that their voices will be heard,” the Holy Father said.