Islamic militants killed at least 10 Christians last Monday, including a Pentecostal pastor, in Benue state, Nigeria, local residents said.

The middle belt of Nigeria has seen increasing sectarian attacks as militants from the majority Muslim North, including Fulani herdsmen, encroach upon the majority Christian south where the land owning farmers tend to be Christian. Church leaders frequently complain that the Government is not doing enough to protect local people.

The Rev. Simon Nbach of Flaming Fire Ministry and the other Christians were massacred in the attack on Anwule Oglewu village of Ohimini County as farmers were working in their fields, residents said. The assailants also burned down a Catholic Church building and destroyed dozens of homes.

“The pastor’s corpse has been found, alongside two other corpses of two other Christians, Adoya Ejigai, and Ejeh Loko,” area resident Casmir Eigege told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “So far, 10 Christians have been confirmed dead, and one other Christian was abducted by the herdsmen.”

Eigege identified the attackers as Fulani herdsmen.

Two hundred empty wheelchairs arranged meticulously in a Roman piazza last week with a direct and unsettling message: “Non mi uccidere” (“Don’t kill me”) symbolised a powerful campaign against legalising assisted-suicide/euthanasia in Italy.

In 2022, Italy’s lower house passed a bill facilitating a right to request ‘medical assistance in dying’ where the patient has an irreversible illness, is enduring ‘intolerable’ suffering, and is being kept alive by medical treatments, as is extremely common with seriously ill people.

However, the legislation has ben stalled in the Senate for the past three years..

According to the organisers of the protest, the 200 empty wheelchairs represent the sick, disabled, elderly, and vulnerable people who “are asking Parliament for more care, more rights, more dignity but are instead faced with cynical shortcuts to death.”

“Only 33pc of those entitled to palliative care” have access to it, “with some Italian regions where coverage drops to as low as 4pc-5pc.” This figure leaves thousands of families without health care assistance.

Italy has begun a “drift toward assisted suicide that could lead to a veritable state-sanctioned massacre of the sick, the elderly living alone, the depressed, and people with disabilities,” said ProVita & Famiglia.

The Finance Minster has dismissed policies to boost Ireland’s fertility rate in response to a report detailing the demographic and financial challenges of a rapidly ageing population and a fertility collapse.

The country faces a surge in the number of older people as a proportion of the population, falling tax revenues and increased fiscal deficits, as the fertility rate has fallen to 1.5, well below the 2.1 replacement rate, according to the new report by the Department of Finance.

‘Future Forty’ outlines potential scenarios between now and 2065, by which time almost half of the State’s expenditure will be on age-related spending including healthcare, long term care and pensions.

The report says there will be a “stagnating labour force suppressing economic growth”, while advocating that, “Continued inward migration will be vital to maintain growth in the labour force.”

He added that the Government’s focus was on affordability and access to daycare rather than measures to encourage higher birth rates.

The Irish Bishops are encouraging eligible parents to participate in a Department of Education survey on school choice at primary level.

“It is important that all those who wish for a Catholic and sacramental education for their children, and those who wish for a multi-denominational education, to make their wishes known so that proper planning for future educational provision can take place”, said Marie Griffin, chairperson of the Catholic Education Partnership.

In what will be the largest ever national survey of its kind, the parents or guardians of all children from birth to 12 years of age will be asked what the type of primary school they would like their child to attend, whether faith-based or secular.

Parents will also be asked for their preference when it comes to single sex or mixed, and instruction in English or Irish.

A total of 493,000 households will be invited to fill out the online questionnaire, which went live at 12pm yesterday and will run until 16 December.

A separate questionnaire will seek the views of teachers and members of school boards of management.

In the ten years from 2013 to 2023, Ireland has seen a 20pc fall in the number of births and a 20pc rise in the number of deaths, according to the CSO’s Vital Statistics Annual Report 2023.

The report says Ireland’s total period fertility rate for 2023 stood at 1.5, which is below the rate of 2.1 needed to replace the population; in 2013 the rate stood at 1.9.
It was last at 2.1 in the year 2010.

There were 43 fewer births in Ireland in 2023 compared with 2022, but over the last decade, there has been a fall of over a fifth when compared with 2013.

The average of mothers continues to increase, rising to 33.2 years. Ten years ago, it was 32.2.

Another sign of the changing demographic patterns is that a record number of babies were born to women aged 45 years and over in 2023.

There were 408 babies born to women aged over 45 in 2023, up 80.5% compared to 2013.

Births by women aged over 40 increased by over 25% in the same ten year period.

A majority of Catholics in Ireland still wish to marry in the Church, despite substantial growth in ‘New Age’ and civic ceremonies, according to a recent survey commissioned by Catholic marriage agency, Accord.

The study showed that among non-married Catholics, 60% reported that they would like to get married in a church.

However, knowledge of different ceremonial options remains low – with 53% being unaware that it is possible to have a Church wedding without a Mass.

77% also did not know that couples already married civilly can later be married sacramentally in the Church through a ceremony known as Convalidation.

Speaking with The Irish Catholic, Accord director Tony Shanahan said Catholic wedding ceremonies last year were 33% of the total marriages, and that comes even as there is a growth of choices such as secular and spiritualist weddings.

“We wanted to find out what is the attitude of Catholics nowadays to getting married and also, do they know the options available to them as Catholics.”

“The message we take is very positive – that the faith is still alive in the sense of the spiritual”, he said.

The gap between women’s wished-for and actual fertility has grown wider according to a new study from the UK.

The paper by the Institute of Economic Affairs shows that while the UK’s total fertility rate hit a record low of 1.44 children per woman in 2023, women’s intended fertility has remained stable at around 2.2 children since 1979. This means they are having fewer children than they want.

The report by Dr Clara E. Piano examines the evidence on the best way to close the fertility gap and tackle falling birth rates. It finds that while ostensibly pro-natal policies focused on cash transfers and financial incentives have limited success, they do not address the root causes of birth rate declines, and are prohibitively costly for most governments.

However, evidence from the US shows states with greater economic freedom – especially in labour market regulation – tend to have smaller fertility gaps. Work-family compatibility emerges as a crucial constraint, with flexible labour markets naturally providing parents with more options to customise work schedules around family goals.

Housing and land use regulation also significantly impacts family formation. Spacious, affordable housing with multiple bedrooms is what economists call a “child-complement” – couples have higher fertility when they can achieve these conditions.

Turkey is systematically targeting Christians under the guise of “national security,” expelling hundreds of foreign believers and leaving local congregations without spiritual leadership, according to a legal advocacy group.

Speaking at the OSCE Warsaw Human Dimension Conference, Lidia Rieder, Legal Officer for ADF International said “Turkey’s labeling of peaceful Christian residents as ‘security threats’ is a clear misuse of law and an attack on freedom of religion or belief”.

“When governments manipulate administrative or immigration systems to exclude people based solely on their faith, it undermines both the rule of law and the very principles of tolerance and peaceful coexistence that the OSCE was founded to protect.”

Since 2020, more than 200 foreign Christian workers and their families—affecting roughly 350 individuals—have been expelled from Turkey, many of whom had lived there for decades. The Ministry of Interior has assigned these individuals so-called “security codes” such as N-82 and G-87, effectively banning their re-entry and classifying them as national security threats. Between December 2024 and January 2025 alone, at least 35 new codes were reportedly issued against foreign Christians.

The case of two prominent Finlanders who stand accused of “hate speech” for publicly expressing their orthodox Christian beliefs on sexual morality will be heard in the Supreme Court of Finland tomorrow.

Finnish parliamentarian Dr. Päivi Räsänen Räsänen, the country’s former Minister of the Interior, faces two criminal charges for expressing her deeply held beliefs on marriage and sexuality—through a 2019 tweet and a 2004 pamphlet which was later re-published by Lutheran Bishop, Juhana Pohjola.

The Supreme Court’s decision will set a precedent for the future of free speech and freedom of religion in Finland and across Europe.

“In a free society, it should never be a crime to share a Bible verse or express beliefs rooted in faith. The burden of the legal ordeal of the past few years has been challenging, but I remain hopeful that justice will prevail — not only for me, but for the wider principle of free speech in Finland. No one should face criminal charges for peacefully voicing their convictions,” said Räsänen ahead of the trial.

The defendants have already won two unanimous acquittals in lower courts but the prosecuting authorities appealed the case to the Supreme Court.

She was objecting to the Lutheran Church, to which she belongs, supporting a Pride march and tweeted a verse from the bible which begins: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.”

Two-thirds of humanity — more than 5.4 billion people — is now living in countries without full religious freedom, according to a new report by the international pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

The biennial report “Religious Freedom in the World 2025” offers a global overview of the state of this fundamental right and warns of a worrying decline.

The report analyses the situation in 196 countries and documents serious violations of this right in 62 of them. Of these, 24 are classified as countries of “persecution” and 38 as “discrimination”. Only two nations, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka, showed improvements compared with the previous edition.

The report identifies authoritarianism as the principal driver of religious repression. In 19 of the 24 countries in the persecution category, and in 33 of the 38 countries with discrimination, governments apply systematic strategies to control or silence religious life. In China, Iran, Eritrea and Nicaragua, the authorities employ mass surveillance technologies, digital censorship, restrictive legislation and arbitrary detentions to suppress independent religious communities.

“The control of faith has become a tool of political power”, states the executive summary, which denounces an increasingly sophisticated “bureaucratisation of religious repression.”