A leading Nigerian human rights organization has published a report claiming that largely Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed about 700 Christians in May as “farewell gifts” to former President Muhamadu Buhari.
Buhari handed over power to new President Bola Tinubu on May 29, but the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law in a June 12 report said Fulani herdsmen had killed hundreds of Christians as a way of bidding farewell to a president accused of using his 2015-2023 tenure to foster an anti-Christian, pro-Muslim agenda in Africa’s most populous state.
“The Nigerian radical Islamic leaders who marked the end of their civilian office tenures on 29th May 2023 were wished ‘farewell’ by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, who marked the end of their office tenures by slaughtering not less than 700 defenseless Christians in May 2023 (month of handover),” states the report, compiled by Emeka Umeagbalasi, a Catholic human rights activist and chairman of the organization.
The report, a copy of which was sent to Crux, offers details of alleged Christian killings in several states, noting that “Plateau [state]‘donated’ 350 Christian lives, Benue 190, Kaduna 100, Nasarawa 62, Niger 50, Taraba 40, Borno/Yobe 40, etc.”
“Not less than 1,100 defenseless Christians were hacked to death by Nigerian Government backed Islamic Jihadists in the past 60 days, between 12th April and 12th June 2023,” the report claims, noting that total works out to “a daily average of 17 Christian deaths.”
The report also asserts that 2,150 Christians “have been slaughtered by non-state actors/Nigerian Government backed Islamic Jihadists in the past 160 days, 1st Jan to 12th June 2023. Over 1,400 others were abducted, out of which 10 percent, or 140, may be incapable of returning to their families alive.”
The report claims that 100 churches were razed or destroyed by Islamic Jihadists in the past sixty days, between April 12 and June 12, with 20 pastors attacked.
The new report confirms the trends in an April 10 document which claimed that at least 53,350 Christians have been slaughtered since a 2009 Islamic uprising, with 18,100 churches and 2,200 schools wantonly burned down.

More than half of the global population lives in a country in which state or non-state actors actively persecute people for their religious beliefs, according to the 2023 Religious Freedom in the World report.
The report was released on the first day of Religious Freedom Week, in which the U.S. Catholic bishops have invited Catholics to pray for greater religious liberty both in the U.S. and around the world from June 22–29.
Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity, published the report, which put 28 countries in the “red” category for religious freedom, which denotes religious persecution. Those countries are home to more than 4 billion people and make up about 51.6% of the global population.
The red category includes the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, which the report found to be among the worst religious persecutors. All but one of the countries are in either Africa or Asia. Some of the offenders include Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea.
Nicaragua, which ranked in the less severe “orange” category in the 2021 report, has since moved into the “red” category in the 2023 ranking.

This was caused primarily by President Daniel Ortega’s persecution of Catholic clergy and religious orders as a means to consolidate power and silence dissent.

In a decision seen as an act of defiance towards the Russian Orthodox Church, which also has the effect of promoting closer ties with Roman Catholics and other Western branches of Christianity, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has decided to move Christmas to Dec. 25.
Traditionally, Ukrainian Christians, the bulk of whom are Orthodox, have celebrated Christmas on Jan. 7, along with other predominantly Orthodox nations, including Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February of last year.
On May 24, the Council of Bishops of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine voted nearly unanimously to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as regards most major feasts, except for Easter and a handful of other feast days, such as the feast of the Trinity.
In a statement following the Council’s decision, Metropolitan Epiphany, head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said the decision “is not an easy one, we have been coming to it for a long time, gradually, step by step, and we are making it carefully.”
However, Epiphany said the decision was “as necessary as the decision to introduce the Ukrainian language in worship instead of the traditional Slavic language, to introduce an autocephalous structure of the Church’s life instead of centuries of subordination.”

What first comes into your mind when you see the word “Iran” in the headlines?
Some of us immediately reflect on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s relentless efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, while their go-vernment-sponsored mobs chant, “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” For others, it’s Iran’s relentless military aggression in the Middle East and assassination squads else-where. Meanwhile, those of us who focus on international religious freedom recall that year after year, Iran is listed as one of the 10 worst persecutors of Christians in the world.
But there is another story that isn’t widely reported in our American media. Amazingly, there’s an explosive number of conversions to Christianity taking place in Iran.
I first became aware of this surprisingly good news when I lived in Israel – it was talked about among groups who were focused on Middle East evangelism. Then after I returned to the U.S., I read an unexpected report by Daniel Pipes, a Jewish researcher and author and friend of mine who wrote about it for Newsweek:
“Something religiously astonishing is taking place in Iran, where an Islamist government has ruled since 1979: Christianity is flourishing. The implications are potentially profound.
“Consider some testimonials: David Yeghnazar of Elam Ministries stated in 2018 that ‘Iranians have become the most open people to the gospel.’ The Christian Broad-casting Network found, also in 2018, that ‘Christianity is growing faster in the Islamic Republic of Iran than in any other country.’
“This trend results from the extreme form of Shi’ite Islam imposed by the theocratic regime. An Iranian church leader explained in 2019: ‘What if I told you the mosques are empty inside Iran? What if I told you no one follows Islam inside of Iran? …What if I told you the best evangelist for Jesus was the Ayatollah Khomeini [founder of the Islamic Republic]?”’

This past weekend, a Ger-man bishop and a German state premier took part in an initiative to bring bells stolen by the Nazis during World War II to their rightful homes in Poland.
Bishop Gebhard Fürst of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and Baden-Württemberg’s pre-mier, Winfried Kretschmann, completed the act of repatriation, which spanned three different locations within Poland, according to CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language partner agency.
The church bells were originally taken from the communities of Straszewo (formerly Dietrichsdorf), Frombork (Frauenburg), and Zegoty (Siegfrieds-walde), CNA Deutsch reported. Postwar, they found their way into Catholic churches in Württem-berg, Germany. On the week-end of June 24-25, they made their long-awaited return jour-ney, restoring an essential part of these communities’ Catholic heritage.
The repatriation of the chur-ch bells is part of a larger initia-tive, “Bells of Peace for Euro-pe,” initiated by Fürst. The project was inspired by renovations at the St. Martin Cathedral in Ro-ttenburg, which revealed that one of the cathedral’s bells originally hailed from what is modern-day Poland. An in-depth investigation of all Catholic churches in Württemberg further uncovered 66 additional bells from the same era, with 54 of them still active, according to the diocese.

Victims of violence in north central Nigeria have told The Pillar that they believe the Nigerian government will not bring any aid to them as their communities continue to face violence from marauders who have burned villages and crops, stolen cattle, and kidnapped people for ransom.
In Nigeria’s Niger state, a survivor of violence and abduction in one community told The Pillar about a March attack on her village, in which she and dozens of other people were kidnapped.
Abduction victims in Nigeria declined to show their faces to a camera, for fear of retribution.
The survivor, a 36-year-old mother of two who requested anonymity for her safety, recalled that “this year, precisely on Tuesday, 14 March, it was rumored that armed bandits would attack our village. We didn’t take it seriously as we went about our normal business.”
“On that fateful day, I went to fetch firewood. When I came to offload the first batch, I noticed my husband, who took our son to school, had brought him back. When I asked why, he said, there are fears that bandits are on their way to our community.”
“As we were planning to escape, we ran to the river to fetch water in case our children became thirsty while we are hiding. While we were there, they came and searched the entire village and found no one; by then, we were hiding in the surrounding bushes,” she said.

Four of Germany’s 27 diocesan bishops have refused to fund a committee created to implement the resolutions of the country’s controversial “synodal way.”
The synodal way’s logo at the final assembly in Frankfurt, Germany, on March 9, 2023. © Synodaler Weg/Maximilian von Lachner.
Cologne’s Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Regens­burg’s Bishop Rudolf Voder­hol­zer, Passau’s Bishop Stefan Oster, and Eich­stätt’s Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke vetoed the release of money from a common fund known as the Association of the Dioceses of Germany (VDD), which requires the unanimous approval of the country’s diocesan bishops.
Their decision means that supporters of the synodal way must find an alternative source of funding for the ”synodal committee” ahead of its scheduled first meeting in November.
The committee, which is composed of diocesan bishops and lay people, is intended to pave the way for the creation of a permanent “synodal council” overseeing the Church in Germany — a proposal explicitly rejected by Rome.
Soon after the four bishops’ stance was made public, Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the influential lay Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), insisted that the synodal committee’s deliberations would go ahead as planned.
Recalling the origins of the synodal way, she said: “It was the bishops who, in unity, asked the ZdK in 2019 to begin this way with them.”

Christian leaders and activists from five political parties have jointly issued a statement over large-scale real estate operations in the Christian stronghold of the Nineveh Plains, saying the move aims to change the demography and threaten the Christian heritage of the region.
Five political groups – the Assyrian Democratic Movement (Zowaa), the National Union of Beth Nahrain, the Abnaa al-Nahrain Party, the Assyrian National Party, and the Chaldean-Assyrian-Syriac Popular Council signed the document to denounce the plan for the Governorate of Nineveh, Fides news agency reported on June 21.
The region is a traditional home of various races and religions, especially Christian-majority Chaldean, Assyrian, and Syriac communities belonging to different churches.
A major Christian political party “the Babylon Movement,” which controls four of the five seats reserved for Christian deputies in the Iraqi parliament, did not endorse the document.
The statement said the groups have received information from official and community sources that the municipalities of Nineveh are promoting transactions for the sale and ownership of residential lands in the Talkeif district, one of the districts of the Nineveh Plains, to individuals who are not from the region and who are not of the Christian component, Fides reported.
The groups said these initiatives are “a clear violation” of the Constitution and the 2013 ruling of the Federal Supreme Court.

Touting the process as an effort to lead global Catholicism “beyond fragmentation and polarization,” the Vatican published Tuesday the Instrumentum laboris, or “working document,” for a Synod of Bishops on Synodality convened by Pope Francis in October.
However, the specific issues the document lists as matters to be addressed during the summit may actually fuel the Church’s divisions by seeming to favor liberal concerns.
Among the specific topics for discussion the document lists are the ordination of women as deacons and married men as priests, as well as greater outreach to LGBTQ+ Catho-lics and a focus on the poor, the environment and immigration.
On the other hand, the nearly 27,000-word document does not suggest discussion of abortion, same-sex marriage or euthanasia, all typical priorities of more conservative Catholics – indeed, the words “abortion” and “euthanasia” never appear in the text, and “marriage” is mentioned only three times, in the context of remarried divorcees and how to handle inter-church and polygamous marriages.
Although the text stipulates it is “not a document of the church’s magisterium,” meaning its teaching authority, the preponderance of what are often considered progressive Catholic topics nevertheless may further alienate conservatives.
Formally opened by Pope Francis in October 2021, the Synod of Bishops on Synodality is officially titled, “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission,” and is a multi-stage process that will culminate in two Rome-based gatherings in October of this year and October 2024.
Though still difficult for many to define, “synodality” is generally understood to refer to a collaborative and consultative style of management in which all members, clerical and lay, participate in making decisions about the Church’s life and mission.

Year after year, the feast of Corpus Christi brings whole neighborhoods to the streets in Spain, with some enterprising families chaining lawn chairs to prominent viewing spots days in advance. This year was no different, with the procession lasting for hours and civic and religious leaders, as well as representatives of various religious groups, taking part.
Each city’s procession has something special. For example, the city of Toledo is known for lining its streets with thousands of flowers. Valencia, a city on the southeastern coast, has many memorable traditions.
Valencia’s first Corpus Christi procession was recorded in a historical document in 1355, and by 1372, it was an annual affair. Its particular characte-ristics stand out.
The Valencia cathedral has a chalice that some historians believe could be the Holy Grail. This gives the city a decidedly eucharistic feel, even when it’s not Corpus Christi. Naturally, the chalice is always featured in the Valencia procession.
Valencia, Spain, claims to have the largest processional monstrance in the world and uses it in Corpus Christi processions.