A new report, scheduled to be released next month, says that 90,000 Christians were murdered for the faith around the world in 2016, which amounts to one Christian martyred every six minutes.
According to Vatican Radio, the new report is being published in February by The Center for Studies on New Religious (CENSUR) and presents devastating data on the reality of Christian persecution throughout the world.
In the last year, 90,000 Christians lost their lives and an estimated 500 to 600 million are unable to freely profess their faith.
“ . . . [P]ersecution is not a sporadic phenomenon in the history of Christianity but has profoundly marked the life of Christians to this day, in many countries of the world,” writes Vatican Radio’s Debora Donnini.
In a wide-ranging interview with Donnini, CENSUR director Massimo Introvigne revealed that of the 90,000 known deaths, 70 percent, or 63,000, were killed in tribal conflicts in Africa. They were included in the number of those murdered for the faith because it is believed that they were killed because of conscientious opjection to taking up weapons. Another 30 percent, or 27,000, died as the result of terrorist attacks, in the destruction of Christian villages, or in the governmental persecution found in countries such as North Korea.
As tragic as these numbers are, they represent a slight decrease from 2015 when 105,000 Christians were believed to have been murdered for the faith.
Introvigne also clarified why there is such a wide disparity in the numbers when it comes to determining the number of Christians murdered every year for the faith. Why do some organizations count only a few hundred in the same year that other organizations count tens of thousands?
“When the discrepancies are so large, it is clear that you are counting different things,” Introvigne said.
For example, some count only those who are confronted with the choice, “Either deny the faith or perish”, which amounts to perhaps several hundred a year.
“Those with a wider notion: not ‘candidates for beatification’ but people who . . . [knew] that they could be killed making certain gestures or practices of faith,” there could be several thousand, he said.
“But if you talk to people who are killed in a broad sense because they are Christians, then we come to 90,000, i.e., one death every six minutes.”
For example, the Vatican’s Fides News Agency is reporting that 28 people died violently for the faith in 2016: Fourteen priests, nine religious, one seminarian, and four lay people. Included in that number is Father Jacques Hamel, who was killed in a terrorist attack in France last summer while celebrating Mass.
When asked what struck him the most about worldwide Christian persecution, Introvigne offered a chilling warning about the growth of intolerance around the world.
“ . . . [I]ntolerance is the antechamber of discrimination which then in turn is the antechamber of the persecution.”
We are seeing the effects of this growing intolerance in our own culture where the prevailing political correctness has caused Christians and their belief in the sanctity of life and traditional marriage to be ever more marginalized. The case of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, brought this intolerance to a new level when she was actually incarcerated for her beliefs.
Dangerous precedents such as government-imposed mandates that attempt to force religious healthcare providers to provide services that violate their religious beliefs and state sanctioned discrimination laws that make it illegal to refuse to serve at same-sex weddings have already begun to codify the persecution of the faithful in the United States.
The land of the free and the home of the brave can only remain so when those of us who are free and faithful become brave enough to do everything we can to halt these dangerous social trends before Christians in this country become part of these sad statistics.
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