Father Ferdinand Fanen Ngugban and six others died of gunshot wounds after armed gunmen invaded the grounds of St. Paul Parish in Ayetwar March 30, said the Diocese of Katsina-Ala.
“After celebrating Mass and while he prepared to leave for the chrism Mass at St Gerald Majella Catholic Cathedral, Katsina-Ala, to renew his priestly vows alongside his brother priests, there was pandemonium among the internally displaced persons who took refuge in the parish premises,” said a state-ment from the diocese.
“Father Ferdinand went out to find out the cause of the confusion. He was shot in the head as he tried to take cover after sighting some armed gun-men,” the diocese said. It said burial arrangements for all the deceased would be announced.
Ngugban, who served as assistant pastor at St. Paul Parish, was ordained a priest in 2015.
The attack took place in Benue state. The gunmen reportedly raided the village and set houses on fire before attack-ing the parish.

At the risk of compromising the appeasement efforts aimed at facilitating the formation of a new government, Lebanese media on Thursday broadcast a leaked video in which the top Christian leader openly criticizes the Shia Hezbollah movement, accusing it of harming the country by dragging it into regional conflicts.
“Why are you standing against neutrality? Do you want to force me to go to war? Do you want to keep Lebanon in a state of war?” Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai asks Hezbollah in the video. “Would you ask for my opinion when you do go to war? Did you ask for my approval to go to Syria, Iraq and Yemen? Would you ask for the government’s opinion when declaring war and peace with Israel? The constitution says that declaring war and peace is upon the decision of two-thirds of the government’s votes.”
“Why do you decide to drag the Lebanese into a war you have decided to wage without asking their opinion?” Rai said. “You’re not looking out for (our) interests, nor the interests of your people,” he said, apparently addressing Hezbollah, a heavily-armed movement allied to Iran.

After reflecting on the biblical meaning of fraternity during the Vatican’s Passion of the Lord, the papal preacher on Good Friday lamented the disunity existing among Catholics. “Fraternity among Catholics is wounded,” said Cardinal Raniero Cantala-messa. “Divisions between Churches have torn Christ’s tunic to shreds, and worse still, each shredded strip has been cut up into even smaller snippets. I speak of course of the human element of it, because no one will ever be able to tear the true tunic of Christ, his mystical body animated by the Holy Spirit.” “In God’s eyes, the Church is ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic’, and will remain so until the end of the world,” he said. “This, however, does not excuse our divisions, but makes them more guilty and must push us more forcefully to heal them.”
The “Passion of the Lord” service is the only liturgy presided over by the pope in which he’s not the homilist. Instead, the task falls on Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa – elevated to the Church’s most exclusive club last year, after four decades serving as the preacher of the papal household.
As has been the case since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the liturgy was almost devoid of the presence of faithful, with less than 200 participants, including cardinals, acolytes and Vatican’s gendarmes and Swiss Guards, present in St. Peter’s Basilica guarding the pope.
After processing to the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica in eerie silence, the 84-year-old Pope Francis prostrated himself before the altar. During the service, the Gospel recounted the last hours in Jesus’ life, from his arrest to his burial.
Leading by example, in a country currently in full lockdown due to the pandemic, the veneration of the cross, when each faithful goes in procession kiss a statue of Christ crucified, was omitted.

Ireland’s Catholic bishops have announced they will embark on a “synodal pathway” for the Church and hold a National Synodal Assembly within the next five years.
The bishops made the announcement at the end of their annual Spring Meeting, which took place virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The prelates called it a “pivotal time” for the Church in Ireland, and acknowledged they were “acutely aware of the huge challenges to the faith over the past fifty years from the rapid transformation and secularization of society” on the island.
Once one of the most Catholic nations in Europe, revelations about clerical sexual abuse has left public confidence in the Church at its lowest level in the history of Ireland.
Not only has Mass attendance dropped significantly over the past quarter century, the Irish people have increasingly rejected laws seen as rooted in Catholic teaching.