22 pastoral care workers killed in 2013, almost double from 13 in the previous year
A team of police officers stormed the NanLe County Christian Church in China on November 16, 2013 and arrested Pastor Zhang ShaoJie, removing him to an undisclosed location.
Pastor ShaoJie has not been seen since he was taken from his government-sanctioned church a month ago. Such incidents are very common these days.
Persecution, or religious bigotry, is nothing new for Christians. The followers of Jesus Christ faced the wrath and torment of antagonists soon after the death of Jesus 2000 years ago. It continues even today.
According to a Fides News Agency report from Vatican city, during 2013, 22 pastoral care workers were killed worldwide, almost double compared to 13 who were killed in 2012. On the night of December 31, 2013 and January 1, 2014, Fr Eric Freed, a priest in Eureka, California was killed: The police are investigating to determine the reasons of such murder.
The persecution of Christians is expected to rise in 2014, according to Release International, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to raise awareness about Christian persecution and to offer pastoral and practical support to persecuted Christians around the world.
Pope Francis said, “unfortunately more Christians are suffering discrimination and violence now than in Christianity's early times. He said some countries guarantee human rights ‘on paper’ but not in practice, leaving Christians subject to "limitations and discrimination." Pope said "injustice must be denounced and eliminated."
Christians have been attacked in China, parts of Africa and the Middle East, and in some places cannot worship openly. Further, denial of civil rights on the basis of religion – or religious discrimination – is another form of persecution which is prevalent in many countries.
Release International, says a report released by Vatican Radio, has highlighted two challenging areas for Christians this year, said spokesperson Andrew Boyd. The first, he said, is “the continuing rise of Islamist persecution” in the form of militant groups that are seeking to change the governments within their countries and to take power, in particular, in Afghanistan and Nigeria, which are both set for elections this year.
The second challenging area is the communist and post-communist world. Boyd identified North Korea to be the biggest concern. “North Korea has headed many organizations’ lists as the worst persecutor of Christians in the world for quite some time now,” he said. In China which is also not behind others, Christians are continuously targeted.
Meanwhile, Fides said for the fifth consecutive year, the place most affected, with an extremely elevated number of pastoral care workers killed is Latin America, especially in Colombia. The pastoral care workers who died violently in 2013 are: 19 priests, 1 religious sister, 2 lay persons.
In America: 15 priests were killed; in Africa: 1 priest was killed in Tanzania, 1 religious sister in Madagascar, 1 lay person in Nigeria were killed; in Asia, 1 priest in India and 1 in Syria were killed; in the Philippines 1 lay person was killed; in Europe a priest was killed in Italy. There are no numbers from China.
The fact that Christians are continuously persecuted has a basis in Scripture. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus asks his followers to take up their cross and follow him and predicts that his followers will be persecuted for his name.
Fides said there is still much concern regarding the fate of many other pastoral care workers who have been kidnapped or disappeared, of whom there has been no news, such as the three Congolese Augustinian priests of the Assumption, kidnapped in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo in October 2012, and a Colombian priest who has disappeared for months.
While the terrible conflict that has plunged Syria in blood for three years does not spare the Christians: we have not had any news of the Italian Jesuit Fr. Paul Dall'Oglio for a long time, of the two metropolitan Bishops of Aleppo - the Greek Orthodox Boulos al-Yazigi and the Syrian Orthodox Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, of the Orthodox nuns of the monastery of Santa Tecla. Fr. Georges Vandenbeusch, the French "Fidei Donum" priest has just been released, who had been kidnapped on November 13 in his parish home in Nguetchewe, Cameroon.
Christians, heeding the words of Jesus, know there will always be persecution, stated Boyd. “But that doesn’t mean that we stay silent about it,” he added. Scripture urges Christians to both remember those who suffer and to speak out against injustice.
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