Armed Fulani herdsmen accompanied by militants in Nigerian army uniforms killed 17 Christians in their homes in the heart of Jos, north-central Nigeria, on  Sept. 27, including four children, area sources said.

At about 7:30 p.m. in an area known as Rukuba Road, the assailants broke into one home shooting randomly and killed 14 members of one family, including 15-year-old IshayaKogi, 17-year-old Jonathan Kogi, Cynthia Kogi, 22, and Lucky Kogi, 25, their uncle told Morning Star News.

Two of Lucky Kogi’s children, 3-year-old Majesty Lucky and Blessing Lucky, 14, were also killed in the assault, he said.

“When the Fulani herdsmen came, they shot into the house randomly, breaking and forcing their way into rooms shooting defenceless women and children and anyone in sight,” the mournful RoguAudu, who lost his mother and two of his own children in the attack, told Morning Star News.

The attack took place close to the Nigerian army military cantonment, Rukuba Barracks, in Jos. Surviving family members told Morning Star News that the Fulani herdsmen, armed with both firearms and machetes, were accompanied by Nigerian army soldiers.

With Pope Francis midway into the sixth year of his pontificate, the percentage of U.S. Catholics who view him favourably, while still strong, is noticeably down.

And, compared to a January poll by the Pew Research Centre that showed Catholics being evenly split on how well Pope Francis has handled the issue of clergy sex abuse, numbers in the new poll, released on Oct. 2, show that twice as many Catholics feel he is doing only a fair or poor job on the issue than say he is doing a good or excellent job.

The overall favourability number for the Pope is 72%, split between 42% of Catholics who see him “mostly favourable” and 30% who view him “very favourable.” The latter number down a third from the last Pew poll last January, when Pope Francis had been at 84% favourability. The 72% figure is lower than Pew’s favourability findings for Pope Benedict XVI except for its first poll asking the question shortly after Pope Benedict assumed the papacy in 2005.

Two of the four working groups for English-speaking prelates at the worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops on young people have spent time considering the impact of clergy abuse scandals on the global church’s credibility. In the first of three reports expected from the working groups during the Oct. 3-28 Synod of Bishops, one of the English groups said bluntly that in the gathering’s expected final document clergy abuse “cannot be skimmed over tangen-tially in a few short sentences.”

Naming some of the effects of abuse – “shattered trust, the trauma and lifelong suffering of survivors; the catastrophic failures in case management; the continued silence and denial” the group added: “these issues cry out to be named openly by the Synod.”

“If priests themselves are afraid to minister among the youth, then how can our Synod get out the message that young people, their faith and their vocational discernment are important to us?” asked that group, which is being led by Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias.

“As one member of our Group reminded us: ‘Trust arrives slowly, on foot, but Trust leaves on horseback!’” the report said. “‘Trust must be rebuilt, one person at a time.’”

The 267 prelates and the 72 auditors taking part in the Synod of Bishops have been meeting in 14 groups divided by working language for the past few days to reflect on the first part of the gathering’s three-part working document, known as the Instrumentum Laboris.