Editorial

Paying Attention to Persecution in Africa

Posted

A prayer service last week in Manhattan turned a bright spotlight on the horrendous incidences of Christian persecution in Africa, an issue that’s all but ignored by the rest of the world—including, unfortunately, parts of the world where Christians are a strong majority.

Thanks to Cardinal Dolan for making the service a top priority and pushing hard to get it organized in a short period of time. Brother Tyrone Davis, C.F.C., the head of the archdiocesan Office of Black Ministry and a coordinator of the service, said the cardinal had communicated to him “a real sense of urgency” of the need to “stand up, make a statement and shed some light on this situation.”

Even the date of the service at Holy Family Church, the United Nations parish, had meaning: It was held on June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, among Christianity’s earliest martyrs (Story, Page 2).

And while it’s true that followers of Jesus are under attack in many parts of the world—India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq, for example— the steady drumbeat of incidents in Africa demands a lot more international attention that it is currently receiving.

According to the 2015 Open Doors World Watch List, which monitors Christian persecution around the world, Africa saw the largest increase in persecution of Christians for the third year in a row—with most of the increase due to Islamic extremism.

Kenya made the biggest jump, moving up from number 43 on the list to number 19 during the course of 2014, and where this year some 150 Christians were shot and killed at Garissa University College, an attack noted at the Manhattan service by Archbishop Charles Balvo, a native New Yorker who is the papal nuncio to Kenya and South Sudan.

Nigeria, where Boko Haram extremists kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in a Christian village more than a year ago, entered the top 10 of the Open Doors list for the first time this year. Somalia, which has no functioning government and where Christian persecution is especially severe, retained its number 2 spot on the list, and Sudan and Eritrea reentered the top 10.

Is it any wonder, then, that Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama, the president of the Bishops Conference of Nigeria, in a letter to Cardinal Dolan, described Africa as “the new Coliseum, where we are thrown to the beasts?” Is it possible to ignore his plea for recognition, made in the letter, “Do African Christians not matter?”

Of course they matter, and that’s what Cardinal Dolan wants to address.

In his remarks at the service, where he was joined by a roster of interfaith leaders and representatives from U.N. missions, the cardinal read from a letter he had written to Archbishop Kaigama assuring him “that you and your people are not occasional sound bites or news trailers, but names, souls, brothers and sisters, God’s children, whom we will not and cannot forget.”

And that is what’s key. Persecution and atrocities committed in other parts of the world may have more geopolitical consequences than situations in Africa, but God does not rank his children that way.

Neither should we.