CV NEWS FEED // As Easter celebrations draw near, Interim National Director of the Pontifical Missions Societies in the United States Rev. Anthony D. Andreassi asks fellow Catholics to raise awareness of ongoing religious persecution across the globe.
“For most Christians in the United States and the developed world, Lent tests the sincerity of our devotion with the temporal temptations of modern life. But in much of the global south, one’s faith can be subject to far more severe trials. Millions of Catholics risk their lives to worship God, and the simple act of attending Mass can be life threatening,” Rev. Andreassi said in a March 25 op-ed published by Newsweek.
It is particularly dangerous to practice Christianity in Nigeria, he said.
“If the current situation remains unchanged,” Rev. Andreassi wrote, “before Holy Week ends this Easter, we will in all likelihood receive new reports of Catholics murdered in Nigeria, as was the case last Christmas when as many as 200 Catholics were slaughtered and hundreds more injured in attacks in more than 20 Nigerian villages.”
As CatholicVote previously reported, the jihadist attacks that Andreassi referred to, which occurred in Nigeria’s Central Plateau State in 2023, have been linked to the Fulani herdsmen group, which is predominantly Muslim.
Rev. Andreassi said in his op-ed that confronting the spread of religious persecution can start by raising awareness of the crisis and “confronting” its perpetrators.
“America was founded on the conviction that all people are entitled to religious freedom. It’s one of our founding principles, and the government of the United States has a moral and now, more recently, a legal responsibility to support that value wherever it is assailed,” he said.
Rev. Andreassi called on the U.S. Department of State to redesignate Nigeria on its international religious persecution watchlist as a Country of Particular Concern after failing to do so for the third year in a row despite continued Islamist violence against Christians in the country.
“The U.S. government should correct that oversight this year,” the priest stated. “We cannot rally the free world to the cause of the persecuted if the leader of the free world makes exceptions for countries where people are suffering persecution, but where we might have competing interests.”
The Pontifical Mission Societies “exist to translate prayer into action,” Rev. Andreassi wrote, adding that, as its national director, it is his objective to “share and spread the faith by providing material and spiritual support wherever the need is great,” emphasizing those who suffer from active persecution.
Rev. Andreassi said that the reconciliation and renewal present in the Lenten season’s reconciliation calls Christians to help those who are oppressed for their beliefs to persevere in growing the Church regardless of how dire the challenges they face may be.
“All free people should expect their governments to act as apostles of freedom and stand with those who ask nothing more and nothing less than to worship God and to live their faith in their daily lives freely and without fear,” he concluded.
