Three Christians have been killed and several others kidnapped in an attack on a village near Movmove in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Militants from the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) launched an assault on the community on the night of July 16, according to Christian persecution watchdog International Christian Concern (ICC).
“We did not realize that they had invaded our village until they landed on us in the house and started slaughtering people while speaking some Islamic words,” a survivor recalled. “That is the moment I realized there was danger. I ran passing through the behind door of our house to the bush, and this is how I managed to survive these killings.”
The attackers also reportedly set fire to several homes.
In response to the attack, the Bishop of the Anglican Church of Beni urged the Congolese Armed Forces to protect the vulnerable community by strengthening the military units based in the area.
Russia has exported the worst practices of religious intolerance to the territories it occupies in Ukraine, according to the US based Helsinki Commission.
In hearings in Washington DC this week on “Russia’s persecution of Ukrainian Christians”, the Commission said Russia has engaged in routine kidnapping, hostage-taking, violence against civilians, and suppression of Ukrainian culture and language.
“Occupying authorities under orders from the Kremlin have been particularly harsh toward Protestant Christians and institutions, often painting them as agents of the United States,” a press release said.
Mark Sergeev, a Ukrainian evangelical pastor who escaped from occupied Melitopol testified that conditions in Russian-occupied Ukraine are worse now than they were during Soviet times.
Penn State professor Catherine Wanner told the commission there is “no place for Protestants in the Russian world.” According to Wanner, who previously worked for the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, evangelicals in Russia are considered “apostates,” “traitors,” and “spies.”
Kamala Harris, who is very likely to the Democratic nominee in the US presidential election, “will put abortion rights…right at at the centre of this campaign”, according to Congressman Jamie Raskin, a fellow Democrat.
Jessica Mackler of the pro-abortion ‘Emily’s List, has said: “There’s a real electric energy right now in the party”, adding “people are fired up and they are excited about her. And a lot of that is about the leadership that she provides on reproductive rights.”
However, pro-life groups have hit back. “Harris is so committed to abortion that she can’t see anything else — including the developmental stages of children before birth or the real needs of women,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, of SBA Pro-Life America.
She added: “While Joe Biden has trouble saying the word abortion, Kamala Harris shouts it.”
Four Christians, including a pastor, have been arrested for allegedly converting people with illicit promises of material rewards.
The incident occurred in India’s most populous state of nearly 200 million people where Christians make up a miniscule 0.18 percent of the population.
Uttar Pradesh, like the national government, is run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with strong links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindu nationalist organization.
Two Hindu activists intervened in a prayer meeting and informed the police, alleging forced religious conversion through allurement.
They claimed a Christian pastor and three local villagers had converted as many as 60 people of 15 Hindu families to Christianity and were trying to do the same with other villagers.
He alleged they give people money as well as fridges, televisions, bicycles, motorcycles and sewing machines for converting.
He said free evangelical churches gather people for prayer and pastors pray over the people for healing, adding, “miracles do occur.”
“These prayer meetings are alleged to be conversion meetings. The truth is that the pastors do not baptise people after the enactment of the new ordinance”.
A new law in Pakistan to tackle Christian girls being abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and married off to older men has been welcomed by the country’s Catholic leadership.
Pakistan’s National Assembly unanimously approved the raising of the minimum legal age of Christians for marriage to 18, amending an 1872 British rule allowing marriage at 13 for girls and 16 for boys.
About 19 million Pakistani women are victims of child marriage, according to 2018 data, with religious minorities being particularly vulnerable.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan hailed the act saying it “will play a crucial role in protecting our young and minor girls from forced conversions and child marriages”.
They expressed hope that the Government would take “further steps to criminalise forced religious conversions”.
This act is not the first legislation of its kind in response to rampant child marriages, but courts do not always enforce these laws.
Eight months after more than 300 Christians were massacred on Christmas Eve and three months after another string of attacks over the Easter period, the Nigerian government has failed to keep people safe, according to a priest caring for displaced people.
Father Andrew Dewan, director of communications in Pankshin Diocese, said survivors of violence by extremists in Nigeria’s Middle Belt “have no trust” in their leaders as they face continued attacks and an increasing food shortage,
He told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that “elected officials are just not interested in the welfare of the people”, offering no protection or other practical support to Christian communities whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed.
The priest added that he regularly receives reports of fresh killings and other atrocities. He highlighted that last Saturday (13 July) terrorists kidnapped a Christian woman and her daughter, and on Sunday (14 July) armed Fulani herdsmen stormed a Christian community in Bokkos once again and “killed the village head”.
Fr Dewan said there is a clear religious dimension to the attacks, even though conflict over land is also a factor, with Muslim-majority herdsmen targeting overwhelmingly Christian farming communities.
A National Eucharistic Congress concluded Sunday with a Mass with tens of thousands of people in an NFL football stadium, where the crowd prayed for “a new Pentecost” in the U.S. Church.
The nearly 60,000 Eucharistic congress attendees were sent out with “a great commissioning” on Sunday morning in which keynote speakers urged participants to proclaim the Gospel in every corner of the country.
More than 1,600 priests, seminarians, bishops and cardinals processed into Mass in the Indianapolis Colts’ stadium in a dramatic opening procession lasting 25 minutes. An additional 1,236 religious sisters and brothers were praying in the stands, according to the event organizers.
Dominican Father Aquinas Guilbeau predicted that the legacy of the National Eucharistic Congress will be like that of the 1993 World Youth Day held in Denver for the Church in the U.S.
“Its grace will shape the Church for the next 50 years,” Father Guilbeau said.
An Indian NGO has called for the introduction of a strict system of population control that limits couples to two children.
This comes despite India’s fertility rate having already dropped to a little above replacement level.
Some Indian States already have such laws, but none exists at the nationwide level. A bill has been submitted to the National Parliament, but has not yet received Government support.
The proposal by the Jansankya Samadhan Foundation (JSF) recommends the non-issuance of birth certificates for any “surplus children” born and punishments for violators including up to 10 years in jail and/or the termination of government positions. The organisation has already submitted a memorandum to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to accept the proposed legislation.
In response to the proposal, the president of the Population Research Institute, Steven W. Mosher, said “The population controllers never give up”.
“Foreign-funded NGOs have been calling for India to adopt a two-child policy for years. But this latest call is particularly nonsensical. The country’s 2020 National Family Health Survey showed that India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is now below 2.0 children per woman. This is well below the 2.1 children needed to maintain a stable population.”
Many women are leaving it too late to have babies, with the average age of those starting IVF treatment passing 35 for the first time, the UK’s fertility regulator has found. This is a symptom of many women putting off when trying to have children naturally until they are well into their 30s.
IVF results in pregnancy in 42 per cent of cases for women aged 18 to 34, a report by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority found, but this drops to 26 per cent for those in their late thirties, and 5 per cent in the early forties.
The overall average age for women to have their first child — whether or not through fertility treatment — was 29 in 2022, up from 28 in 2012 and 27 in 2002.
The report covers national data from 2022. It highlights how record numbers of single women are trying to have babies on their own using sperm donors. More than 5,000 women without a partner went down this route in 2022, making up nearly one in ten fertility patients. Single women starting IVF tend to be slightly older, 36 on average.
Indian Prime Minister, Narenda Modi, acknowledged concerns about Christian persecution from mainly Hindu militants, but largely denied a government role in causing them, according to a delegation of Catholic leaders who met him last Friday.
The delegation led by Syro-Malabar Archbishop Andrews Thazhath met with Modi to press him on religious freedom and the rights of Christian minorities, including members of the oft-neglected Dalit and Tribal groups.
In particular, the bishops raised concerns about ongoing violence in the northeastern state of Manipur which has pitted a majority Hindu ethnic group against a minority Christian population, with an estimated 70,000 Christians displaced and roughly 400 churches destroyed.
“Our anxieties were heard in a way that he expressed solidarity, but he said every time (that) some fringe groups or somebody else is doing it. (That) it’s not the political party or government,” Thazhath said.
Regarding the violence in Manipur, Thazhath said Modi told the bishops that “it is an ethnic conflict, and it does not have a communal color,” meaning not a matter of Hindu v. Christian. Modi insisted, Thazhath said, that the government is “taking all steps” to restore peace.
