Over 100 Priests and Religious Sisters Kidnapped, Arrested or Killed in 2022

Aid to the Church in Need ^ | 12/27/22 | ACN

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At least 12 priests and five religious sisters were murdered during 2022 while fulfilling their mission. Nigeria was one of the most dangerous countries in which to serve the Church, but China, in Asia, and Nicaragua, in Latin America, also had many cases of harassment.

According to information collected by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Nigeria was the country with the highest number of victims, with four priests killed. Others who were murdered while carrying out their pastoral duties include three priests brutally killed in Mexico by members of drug cartels and two who were shot in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The five women religious murdered in 2022 while carrying out their missions were Sister Luisa Dell’Orto, in Haiti, in June; Sisters Mary Daniel Abut and Regina Roba, in South Sudan, in August; Sister Mari de Coppi, in Mozambique, in September; and Sister Marie-Sylvie Vakatsuraki, who was killed in October, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Over 40 kidnappings, five still missing

During the same year a total of 42 priests were kidnapped in different countries, of whom 36 have been released. Three of those kidnapped in Nigeria were murdered, and ACN was unable to obtain information regarding the status of two of the Nigerian priests kidnapped in 2022. In Mali, the whereabouts of the German missionary Fr Hans-Joachim Lohre, a project partner of ACN, abducted in November, remains unknown.

Two priests who were kidnapped in 2019, Fr Joel Yougbaré, from Burkina Faso, and Fr John Shekwolo, from Nigeria, are still unaccounted for, bringing the total number of missing priests to five.

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Pope still propping up the religion of pieces and death?

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Later