Fr Ragheed Ganni was martyred in Mosul, Iraq, on 3 June 2007. Many Christians throughout the world are still being persecuted. The Pope asks us to pray for those persecuted that they may have strength and courage in living their faith. Fr Fergus O’Donoghue SJ explains.
On 30 May 2007, Lina Joy, a woman in Malaysia was taken to court because she had long been baptized as a Catholic. Her request to have her religious registration changed from ‘Muslim’ to ‘Catholic’ was denied. Her conversion became known to everybody and she was left facing the penalty which Islamic tradition imposes on all who convert from that religion: death.
It wasn’t, in her case, official execution; rather the possibility of being murdered by any fanatic who decided to kill her. This case was reported by the BBC, which is unusual, because we are rarely told about the sufferings of Christians in countries where we are a minority.
Totalitarian regimes
The twentieth century was the worst in history for Christians. It is estimated that at least seventy million were martyred. The first million Armenian Christians were massacred in Turkey in 1915. Persecutions, even where Christians were a majority, continued under Communism and Nazism.
Thousands of Russian churches were destroyed from 1920 onward and many priests, religious and lay people were executed or sent to labour camps. Icons, central to the devotion of the Orthodox Church, were used to line mineshafts or burned in stoves. Museums of Atheism were opened, often in former churches.
Hitler, having completely rejected the Catholicism of his childhood, intended to confront and destroy the Church once he had won the Second World War. His regime was very keen on destroying the pastoral work of priests and evicting religious from their homes. Nazis tried to replace Christianity with worship of the State and the race. The criticisms of Popes Pius XI and XII made the Nazis even more determined to eradicate Christianity.
Generations of misery
The spread of Communism after 1945 meant another kind of persecution, which inflicted generations of misery upon millions of Christians and severely weakened the faith in many countries (Poland and Slovakia being exceptions). The situation was bad in Europe and even worse in China, where the communist regime knew no restraint in its killing of Christians, particularly members of the Legion of Mary, who, as laypeople, were thought to be especially dangerous.
In today’s China, the promotion of Communism has ceased, but the government aim of controlling all religion is unaltered. Catholics who do not accept the officially sponsored Patriotic Association are forced into the Underground Church and live under a constant threat of persecution. Bishops, even those of very advanced age, are given long prison sentences or are held without trial. Religious communities must conceal their character.
This persecution also affects Protestants, so leaders of the thriving ‘house churches’ can expect torture and imprisonment. Only international pressure prevented the execution of a house church founder in 2001.
India and the Far East
Christians in Vietnam live under supervision, with ordination to the priesthood restricted by the government, so only a limited (and insufficient) number of priests are ordained each year. Christians in North Korea are worked or starved to death in labour camps and their religion is banned by one of the world’s most repressive regimes.
Hindu extremists in India regard Christianity as a foreign religion. Some regional governments have given them moral or practical support. There was noticeable slowness in the police investigation after Hindu extremists set fire to a van, in which a Protestant missionary and his two small sons were sleeping. All three were burned to death.
The Holy Father asks us to pray for strength and courage for Christian minorities and this is needed more than ever in countries with Islamic majorities. Muslim extremists are becoming more influential and their governments tend to appease them.
Some of the most ancient Christian communities in the world are in sharp decline. In Iraq only 33% of the Christians (many of them Chaldean Rite Catholics) remain; in Bethlehem, Christians are now a minority; those who speak the ancient Aramaic language, which was the mother tongue of Jesus himself, are being forced to emigrate. This means growth in Arab Christian communities as far away as California and Australia, but it also means the retreat of the faith from the very places were Our Lord lived his earthly life and where the truth about Him was first preached.
Threat from extremists
Saudi Arabia has at least 500,000 Christians as immigrant workers, but all faiths except Islam are banned. Christians can worship only in embassies or in oil company compounds. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country and has a tradition of tolerance, but extremists threaten Christians continually, as they do in northern Nigeria and in Pakistan.
Christians are faced with the imposition of Sharia, or Muslim law, in many Nigerian states and with accusations of blasphemy, which carry the death penalty. In Pakistan, Christian women are harassed until they wear a veil. Christians are not allowed to sell alcohol or to keep pigs. Litter is piled near church doors.
A priest in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, is called from the altar on Christmas Day to minister to a Christian who is being hanged, with the date deliberately chosen. Young Egyptian Christians realize that they are unlikely to be promoted if they enter the professions. An oil-rich sultanate sends missionaries to Tanzanian villages trying to convert Christians to Islam, thereby causing major social unrest, though Christians have been a majority in all of Africa since 1980 and their numbers increase every day.
Information
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ are Our Lord’s own words in St. Matthew’s Gospel. Persecuted Christian minorities draw great comfort from His words, but they are bewildered at our lack of interest in their plight; as a Coptic priest from Egypt said, when visiting Ireland, ‘Why do Western Christians know nothing about what we suffer?’
So, it is not enough to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters. We must keep ourselves informed about what is happening to them and, in the age of the Internet, that is very easy. The best Catholic organization on this subject is Aid to the Church in Need (www.acn.org.uk)
This article first appeared in The Messenger (October 2007), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
