At least 24 people were killed after unidentified gunmen attacked a church in northern Burkina Faso, officials said on Feb. 17, in the latest assault against places of worship in the West African nation.

The attack took place on Feb. 16 during a weekly service at a Protestant Church in the village of Pansi in Yagha, a volatile province near the border with Niger.

A group of “armed terrorists attacked the peaceful local population after having identified them and separated them from non-residents,” Colonel Salfo Kabore, the regional governor, told AFP news agency.

“The provisional toll is 24 killed, including the pastor… 18 wounded and individuals who were kidnapped,” he added.

A resident of the nearby town of Sebba said Pansi villagers fled there for safety.

“It hurt me when I saw the people,” Sihanri Osangola Brigadie, the mayor of Boundore commune, told The Associated Press news agency after visiting victims in the hospital in Dori town, 180km (110 miles) from the attack.

The attackers looted oil and rice from shops and forced three youth they kidnapped to help transport it on their motorbikes, he said.

‘Alarming rate’ Christians and churches have become frequent targets in the north of the country.

Before fewdays, also in Yagha province, a retired pastor was killed and another pastor abducted by gunmen, according to an internal security report for aid workers.

Violence has dramatically escalated in the once-peaceful West African nation.

Analysts are concerned that attacks against civilians, including Christians, are increasing “at an alarming rate.”

More than 1,300 civilians were killed in targeted attacks last year in Burkina Faso, more than seven times the previous year, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which collects and analyses conflict information.

The Chinese government has temporarily closed all of the country’s places of worship in an effort to contain the COVID-19 respiratory coronavirus that has now killed almost 3,000 people, with more than 80,000 around the world verified with infections.

The government also banned all group religious activities, including at the YMCA. But it also praised religious groups of all faiths for raising money in an effort to help people afflicted by the disease, people trapped in quarantine zones as well as health workers and others on the front line of the fight to contain the epidemic.

“The party committee and government have unified requirements to suspend the opening of religious venues, suspend all collective religious activities, delay the opening of religious schools, strengthen publicity and guidance for religious people, actively donate goods, and do a lot of work to win the fight against epidemic prevention and control,” said an official statement.

Government religious regulators said religious groups should adhere to the health of staff, believers and members in the first place, and make sure they have deployed and purchased disinfectants, hand sanitizers, masks, etc. They have ordered testing and disinfection of public areas.

The disease is now thought even more highly infectious than first thought by medical researchers, and it continues to spread throughout Asia, North America and in Europe. Most of the fatalities and infections remain in mainland China, which reported 508 new cases and 71 new deaths on Feb 25, bringing totals in the People’s Republic to more than 77,000 cases and more than 2,660 deaths.

The Bishops of Nigeria have asked Catholics to wear black on Ash Wednesday as a sign of mourning and solidarity with the victims of kidnappings and terror attacks.

In a statement due to be read in all Nigerian parishes on Ash Wednesday, the president of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria, Arch-bishop Augustine Akubeze, asks the faithful to wear black, or a black armband, and to join a “Day of Prayer Procession” to protest the crimes of the Islamist group Boko Haram.

Archbishop Akubeze goes on to condemn the public impunity of the perpetrators of such crimes, the lack of arrests of criminals by the government, and the threats made to many communities on an ongoing basis. He also called for support from the international community in the fight for security and religious freedom in Nigeria.

Fewer than half the Orthodox world’s 14 main churches are due to attend a late February summit on Ukraine’s new independent Orthodox Church, convened in Jordan with backing from Russia’s Moscow Patriarchate. “As we have all recognised, dialogue and reconciliation between brothers is the only way forward,” the summit’s organiser, Patriarch Theophilos Giannopoulos of Jerusalem, told church leaders.

“This will not be an official Synod, but rather a fraternal meeting to inaugurate dialogue on challenges facing the Orthodox community at this critical time, as we continue to use every means of communication with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in order to reach a consensus.”

The 67-year-old patriarch sent the open letter ahead of the 25-27 February summit in Amman, called to debate ways of settling disputes over the new church.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister, agrees with advocates of radical change in the nation’s Roman Catholic Church.

Kramp-Karrenbauer, 57, often known as “AKK” in German media, a member of the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told journalists on Feb. 3 that she wished there were many more women in church leadership, beginning with their serving as deacons.

“And I am for the abolition of celibacy. It would help to make more people enthusiastic to serve the church,” she said, adding that the decision to live without a family poses too great an obstacle for those wanting to dedicate their lives to the church.

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s fellow CDU member, Heribert Hirte, said in a telephone interview that AKK entered a political minefield when she called for an end to celibacy in the priesthood. He said the church opposes such political intervention into its internal affairs. Still, he praised Kramp-Karrenbauer for her courage in making a public statement.

Hirte, a Catholic, said that women are getting increasingly impatient as they wait for the church to give them a greater role. And an increasing number of Germans, he said, don’t care at all about religion.

Pope Francis was never going to fall into the trap set for him by his opponents over the Amazon Synod. His response, contrary to the initial reaction, propels the Church on a path of ongoing reform. It’s just not in the way people expected.

After bishops from the region voted overwhelmingly in favour to ordained married men as priests in the Amazon, those intent on thwarting this pontificate kicked up such a fuss that any shift Francis made risked totally distracting from the central message of the Synod: the Church’s work to protect the environment and to stand in solidarity with the Amazon’s indigenous communities.

The 83-year-old Roman Pontiff was left in a bind. Faced with a pincer movement, the Pope appeared simply to ignore the contested questions around ordination in his text – on married men, and female deacons – and upheld the status quo.

But the story does not end there. The Pope’s response has opened doors rather than closing them and has laid the groundwork for future reforms. Francis did not say “no” to married priests in the document just “not at the moment.”

In his post-synodal exhortation, Querida Amazonia, Francis made no explicit mention of the ordination of married men and only affirmed what “cannot be delegated” from the priesthood. He set the framework for discussions but did not silence any voice. All the hot-button issues remain on the table, while a wider debate about how to devolve power away from a tiny group at the top of the Church hierarchy is very much under way.

In the Synod’s final text 128 bishops voted to ordain married deacons as priests in remote regions while 137 in favour of continuing discussions on female deacons.

Several Catholic dioceses in northern Italy have suspended Mass and other activities to help contain the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by coronavirus. The northern regions of Italy saw a dramatic uptick in coronavirus cases over the weekend, prompting some regions to suspend all events or gatherings of any form, in public or private. In response to the outbreak, dioceses in the area have taken various measures, including cancelling Masses and asking Catholics to receive the Eucharist only in the hand. Italian officials have also imposed quarantine restrictions on several towns in the Lombardy and Veneto regions, where most of the infections have occurred. The number of coronavirus cases in Italy has reached 152. Three people have died in what is the highest number of cases in Europe.