In an endless cycle of violence against Christians in Nigeria, seminarian Na’Aman Danlami Stephen of the Diocese of Kafanchan was burned to death on Sept. 7 when a terrorist group called Fulani herdsmen attacked the rectory at St. Raphael Church in Fadan Kamantan.

On the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence based on Religion or Belief, observed on the United Nations' calendar Aug. 22, Pakistan and India are among places of particular concern for Christian rights advocates.

The Pakistani Catholic church strongly condemned the Muslim mob attack on churches and Christian properties Aug. 16 and demanded justice.

Two Catholic Relief Services staff members were shot and killed Easter Sunday in Ethiopia's Amhara region, according to the U.S. Catholic Church's international aid agency. Details of the murders are still unknown, CRS said April 10, but the incident comes amid several days of unrest and protests in the region after Ethiopia's federal government moved to dissolve paramilitary forces.

In 1936, English novelist Evelyn Waugh published a short biography of Edmund Campion, English priest and martyr. When an American edition of the book was published 10 years later, Waugh wrote in the preface, “We are nearer Campion than when I wrote of him.” 

Why do we hate one another? Why do wait hate those who are unlike us in what they believe, how they act, or in how God Himself made them? The simple answer is because of the effects of the First Sin, the Fall, through which we became subject to sin, death and corruption. While Our Lord Jesus Christ through His passion, death and resurrection has conquered these effects, we are still prone to sin. Hate is a particular ugly manifestation of the effects of the Fall. 

Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa was convicted and sentenced by a Nicaraguan court to 26 years in prison Feb. 10 — barely a day after the outspoken prelate defied President Daniel Ortega by refusing to go into exile.

Following a rampage of a radical Jewish gang in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City on the evening of Jan. 26, the Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries in the Holy Land called on political and religious authorities to bring civil and religious life in Jerusalem back to "greater serenity.

Deadly violence hit Christians in Africa Jan. 15, with a Catholic priest in northern Nigeria burned to death and as many as 17 Christians killed in a blast in eastern Congo.

Eritrean authorities are continuing to detain Catholic Bishop Fikremariam Hagos Tsalim of Segheneity, who was arrested at the Asmara International Airport Oct. 15.

After only two days, the West Kowloon Magistrates' Court adjourned the trial of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, 90, and four co-defendants, until Oct. 26.

An agricultural technical school in Eritrea is the latest to fall under government control, in a string of forced seizures of Catholic schools and hospitals.

Catholics in Nicaragua are calling for the release of two priests detained over the past two months as a campaign of arbitrary arrests and church repression continues in the Central American country.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore pleaded for peace in light of recent attacks on pro-life pregnancy centres in the United States.

With 22 dead and about 50 people injured in a Pentecost Sunday massacre in a Catholic church in northwestern Nigeria, African Catholics in Canada are left shaking their heads and praying for peace.