Christian genocide has led to the murder of about 6,000 Nigerians since January. Most of the dead are women and children. Hard on the heels of the murder of 238 Christians in Plateau State the weekend before last, a church, hospital and some 17 houses were torched in a central Nigerian village during an hour-long Read more
The mass exodus of the Rohingya from Myanmar became international news in August of 2017. But the military’s campaign against the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, actually began years earlier — and since 2012, a small network of citizen activists have been risking their lives to secretly film its impact. Their harrowing footage, and the Read more
Aborting a child because it has Down’s syndrome violates human rights and can be considered genocide. “Here at the United Nations (UN) there is much sincere talk and normally passionate action to fight against unjust discrimination,” said Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Vatican nuncio to the United Nations. He pointed to a double standard when he appeared Read more
A French priest has received a human rights award for research uncovering millions of previously unaccounted-for Nazi genocide victims. Father Patrick Desbois was awarded the Lantos Foundation’s Human Rights Prize last week for being a “vital voice standing up for the values of decency, dignity, freedom, and justice.” The prize is named after a Holocaust Read more
The Pope has begged the Rwandan President Paul Kagame for forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s part in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Francis said the Vatican acknowledges the church was in part to blame for the genocide, as were some Catholic priests and nuns. He said these priests and nuns had “succumbed to hatred and violence, betraying Read more
The anniversary of ISIS crimes being recognised as genocide was marked in the US with a gathering of the Genocide Coalition: lawmakers advocates and survivors. On 17 March last year, former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, said ISIS (IS, Islamic State, Daesh) “is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Read more
Rwanda’s genocide of 1994 resulted in over 800,000 deaths. Most were ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Their killers were extremist Hutus who were Catholic Church members. They planned, helped with and carried out the genocide. The Rwanda Conference of Catholic Bishops has just admitted and apologised for its role in the massacres. “We apologize for Read more
A young boy, 10 years old or so, faces the camera. Like many young boys, he is happy to be interviewed. This is war-torn Iraq, however, so he tells of the day ISIS came to his village. He starts to recount, horror after horror, what took place. It is hard to accept that one so Read more
Pope Francis condemned the horror of Auschwitz on Wednesday (Aug. 3), saying he felt the “presence of all the souls who passed through” the concentration camp that he visited during his trip to Poland last week. Speaking at his first weekly public audience at the Vatican since June, the pope reflected on his visit to Read more
Papal trips are important for many reasons, including their geopolitical significance, their meaning for relations with other Christian churches and other faiths, their impact on the local Catholic community, and the media coverage they generate. As a result, foreign trips are among the events every year in which a pope invests the most of himself Read more