Armed groups kill scores of villagers in Nigeria’s north-cen-tral Plateau state in the long-running conflict between noma-dic herders and farmers.
At least 140 people were killed and others are missing after a series of attacks by gunmen on remote villages in north-central Nigeria’s Plateau state.
Officials and survivors con-firmed the Christmas Eve attacks and blamed the killings on the farmer-herder crisis in the West African nation.
They said the military gangs, locally called “bandits,” launched “well-coordinated” attacks in “not fewer than 20 different commu-nities” and torched houses on Saturday and Sunday. Gunfire was still heard on Monday morning. Plateau Governor, Caleb Mutf-wang, said that in Mangu local governorate alone, 15 people were buried on Monday, and authorities in Bokkos had counted not less than 100 corpses.
“I am yet to take stock of (the deaths in) Barkin Ladi,” Mutfwan said, adding, “It has been a very terrifying Christmas for us here in Plateau.”
More than 300 wounded people have reportedly been taken to hos-pitals.
Amnesty International’s Nige-ria office told The Associated Press that it has so far confirmed 140 deaths in the Christian-majority Bokkos and Barkin-Ladi areas of Plateau, based on data compiled by its workers on the ground and from local officials.
There are fears of a higher death toll as some people remain unaccounted for.
Some witnesses said it took more than 12 hours before security agencies responded to their call for help.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, though blame fell on herders from the Fulani tribe, who have been accused of carrying out such mass killings across the northwest and central regions.
The bandit militias operate from bases deep in forests and raid villages to loot and kidnap residents for ransom.

In his annual Christmas address to members of the Roman Curia, Pope Francis urged the Church’s governing bureaucracy to be open to change and to resist “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from moving forward.
Speaking to members of the curia during a Dec. 21 audience, Pope Francis stressed the need to “remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”
“We are called, instead, to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads,” he said.
Referring to something he said was once told to him by a “zealous priest,” the pope said “it is not easy to rekindle the embers under the ashes of the Church. Today we strive to kindle passion in those who have long since lost it.”
“Sixty years after the Council, we are still debating the division between ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives,’ while the real difference is between lovers and those who have lost that initial passion,” he said.
In this year’s speech, Francis told the curia to imitate God’s style of closeness, compassion, and tenderness, and to embark on a path of faith marked by an ability to listen and discern, and an openness to journey.

In his first major media appearance since being convicted of financial crimes by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to five and a half years in prison, Cardinal Angelo Becciu told an Italian TV host Monday that “I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent.”
“I’m going to do everything I can, everything to demonstrate my innocence through the legal system and in every way possible,” Becciu said, speaking on the program Cinque Minuti (“Five Minutes”), hosted by Bruno Vespa, one of the country’s most renowned television journalists.
“I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent,” Becciu said. “I absolutely did not commit any of the crimes of which I’ve been accused.”
With regard to the complex London property deal at the heart of the recent Vatican trial, Becciu appeared to suggest that primary responsibility rested with Italian Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who headed an administrative office within the Secretariat of State that oversaw the London operation but who escaped indictment by becoming a witness for the prosecution instead.
“I wasn’t the one who made the decision. As substitute, do you know how many offices I had to follow? There are 17. I didn’t have the time to follow economic and financial matters step by step,” Becciu said.

In the long-awaited denouement of the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” which has been seen widely as a litmus test of Pope Francis’s press for reform, a Vatican tribunal on December 16 sentenced Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu to five years and six months in prison for his role in various financial crimes.
Becciu was also fined roughly $8,700 and permanently barred from holding any public office in the Vatican City State. An attorney representing Becciu immediately indicated plans for an appeal.
Becciu, 75, was already the first cardinal ever to stand trial on criminal charges before a Vatican civil court, and he now becomes the first ever to be convicted and sentenced. Prosecutors had asked for seven years and three months of prison time for the cardinal.
From 2011 to 2018 Becciu held the all-important position of sostituto, or “substitute,” in the Secretariat of State, making him effectively the pope’s chief of staff, the only figure in the Vatican system with the right to see the pope on a routine basis without an appointment.
Presiding judge Giuseppe Pignatone, a veteran Italian jurist, read the verdicts aloud on Decemebr 16 in a hall belonging to the Vatican Museums which was converted into a makeshift courtroom in order to accommodate not only public interest, but the sheer number of attorneys and support personnel necessary to try such a complex case.
Stretching over two and a half years, the trial featured 86 separate hearings and heard almost 70 witnesses, after what amounted to almost a year of procedural squabbles before the court ever got to the substance of the charges.

Not so much a decision, much less a revolution, it is a promise Pope Francis made to the Virgin Mary: “I want to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore. The place is already ready.”
Pope Francis, 87 years old next week, on 17 December, revealed his intention to Mexican broadcaster N+, while also explaining that he is working to simplify the funeral rite for popes. The Pope also made clear that, although he thinks about death – in part due to old age that “arrives as it is” – the idea of resigning is not at all in the plans.
On the contrary, the Holy Father reveals a desire to travel to Belgium in 2024, in addition to “pending” trips to Polynesia and his native Argentina. The interview was conducted by well-known journalist Valentina Alazraki, a veteran Vatican watcher, on the day Mexico celebrates its “mother,” Our Lady of Guadalupe. The “Morenita” is indeed present throughout the interview, during which the Pope reiterates his “great devotion” to Our Lady. Hence, the choice of St. Mary Major as the place of his eventual burial.
The choice marks a historical novelty, especially with respect to the Popes of the recent past, all of whom were buried in the Vatican Grottoes (the last being Benedict XVI, who died on 31 December 2022). However, the decision to be buried in St Mary Major reinforces the bond with the Liberian Basilica, which the Pope has visited more than 100 times: beginning the day after his election, 14 March 2013; then before and after every international trip; and finally, last week, 8 December, when he went to pay homage with a “Golden Rose” offered to the Salus Populi Romani, the Marian icon that tradition says was painted by St Luke and that watches over the inhabitants of the City of Rome.

Chow, who was jailed in 2020, said in her statement that she made her decision “consi-dering the situation in Hong Kong, my personal safety, my physical and mental health.”
“Perhaps I will never go back again in my lifetime,” she said.
In 2021, Chow was released from prison in Hong Kong after serving more than 6 months for attending an “unlawful” assem-bly in 2019.
She was convicted of attend-ing public protests against a law that would have allowed for political prisoners to be extradited to mainland China to face trial in some circumstances. She was charged and sentenced along with Joshua Wong, a Christian and co-founder of the Demosisto pro-democracy organization with Chow.
Chow was separately facing charges of “colluding with for-eign forces” and other offenses under Hong Kong’s controversial National Security Law.
Before her imprisonment, Chow was banned from running in Hong Kong elections following election law reforms. She has been accused of “sedition” under the terms of the National Security Law, imposed on Hong Kong by the mainland government on July 1, 2020.
The law effectively crimi-nalizes many forms of political speech or criticism of the govern-ment; Chow, Wong, and Nathan Law, another pro-democracy activist currently seeking political refuge in the U.K., were forced to dissolve Demosisto within days of it being imposed.
Following her release from prison, Chow stepped back from public speaking, noting at the time that she needed to recover physically from her time in prison, noting that “[my] body has become too thin during this period.”
Earlier this year, Chow was offered the return of her passport and the possibility of international travel if she first undertook a well-photographed trip to main-land China where several police officers took her on a tour of an exhibition of Chinese national achievements and a visit to the headquarters of the technology company Tencent.
Chow wrote statement Sun-day that “I don’t want to be forced to do anything any more, and I don’t want to be forced to go to mainland China any more.”

Vowing to pursue a program of “justice and peace,” the newly elected president of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference says that agenda will include speaking out against the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.
Critics allege that those laws, which criminalize blasphemy against state-recognized religions, are often abused to oppress religious minorities in the over-whelmingly Muslim nation, as well to settle scores among Muslims themselves.
Famously, an illiterate Catholic woman named Asia Bibi was sentenced to execution by hang-ing for blasphemy in 2010 and spent almost a decade on Pakistan’s death row, until an inter-national pressure campaign resulted in her release in 2019 and settlement in Canada.
“Innocent people should not be targeted and sentenced,” said Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad, who was elected the new leader of the Pakistani bishops in early November.
“My mission is to raise my voice and bring help and relief to the innocent victims,” Shukardin told Crux. The 62-year-old bi-shop insisted that while there are anti-Christian forces in Pakistani society, it’s not universal.
“We take this up with the government on a regular basis, and the government has been very supportive,” he said.
“This anti-Christian sentiment is not pan-Pakistan, but [only] in various places,” Shukardin said. More broadly, Shu-kardin sketched a social development agenda for his term as conference president.

One of India’s largest private hospital companies is believed to be involved in an organ trafficking operation, an investigation published this week by the English The Telegraph newspaper reported.
According to the investigation, several poor citizens from Myanmar were transferred to Delhi’s Apollo Hospital (one of two hospitals in the capital run by the Indraprastha Medical company, also known as IMCL) and paid to have their kidneys exported, which are then donated to other patients, often even foreigners.
“The allegations made by recent international media against IMCL are absolutely false, ill-informed and misleading,” the private company said in a statement. Apollo Hospitals Group said it agreed with the IMCL statement. “As part of its corporate governance policy, IMCL has initiated an investigation into the matter to delve into all aspects of the transplant process,” the company further explained.
Organ sales are being considered in India (and Myanmar), but it would not be the first time reports have emerged of kidney trafficking in India, where there is a shortage of donors. Nearly a million Indians are diagnosed with chronic kidney disease every year and around 200,000 people suffer from end-stage renal failure. By some estimates, only 10% of Indians who develop kidney disease see a nephrologist, and at least 20 Indians die every day waiting for an organ donation. As of 2022, only 7,500 trans-plants have occurred across the country.

As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is celebrating its 75th birthday, the Vatican’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, organized a symposium that aimed to focus on both human rights and care for creation.
The Dec. 8 symposium, co-sponsored by the Sovereign Order of Malta, Caritas in Veritate Foundation, and the International Catholic Migration Commission, formed part of week-long commemorations of the declaration, signed Dec. 10, 1948, widely seen as a foundational text for modern human and civil rights.
In his introduction, Archbishop Balestrero said the 30-article landmark document, adopted by the U.N.’s General Assembly, had recognized the “intrinsic dignity of the human person” in the wake of World War II.
However, he added that the global situation 75 years later looked “undeniably dire” and said the Vatican also believed human beings were “relational in nature,” and existed “not as isolated rights-bearers, but in a web of connections and relationships.”

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released a new report on anti-conversion laws around the world. Providing the legal text for 73 separate laws, the compendium notes that 1 in 4 nations (46 total) restrict the right of its people to either adopt or propagate a religion.
“The right to convert from one religion or belief to another, or to no religion or belief at all, is central to [the] protection for religious freedom,” said Susie Gelman, a USCIRF commissioner. “And in countries with anti-conversion laws, religious minorities tend to be broadly targeted for harassment, assault, arrest, and imprisonment.”
The USCIRF report grouped the laws into four categories. First, anti-proselytizing laws restrict witnessing of one’s faith in 29 nations, including in Indonesia, Israel, and Russia. In Morocco, for example, it is illegal to cause a Muslim to question his or her religion.
The second category of interfaith marriage is restricted in 25 nations, including in Jordan, the Philippines, and Singapore.