CV NEWS FEED // Fides News, the official news agency of the Dicastery for the Evangelization at the Vatican, reported that 13 Catholic missionaries were killed around the world in 2024.
Since 2000, Fides has provided an annual comprehensive report of Catholic missionaries killed while working in pastoral projects within the past year. From 2000 to 2024, Fides has recorded a total of 608 missionaries killed around the world.
As the report explains, “[the list] does not refer only to missionaries and pastoral ‘ad gentes’ in the strict sense, but considers the term ‘missionary’ in a broader context, encompassing all Catholics who were involved in some way in pastoral works and ecclesial activities and who died violently, even if they did not die expressly ‘in hatred of the faith’.”
In 2024, according to Fides, eight priests and five lay people, a total of 13, were killed worldwide.
“This year too, Africa and (Latin) America recorded the highest number of pastoral workers killed: five on both continents,” Fides states. The report elaborates that “a total of 6 men were killed in Africa (2 in Burkina Faso, 1 in Cameroon, 1 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 2 in South Africa), 5 in the Americas (1 in Colombia, 1 in Ecuador, 1 in Mexico and 1 in Brazil) and two in Europe (1 in Poland and 1 in Spain).”
Since it covers only missionaries, the report does not include the killing of local priests, pastoral workers and rank-and-file Catholics, like the many assassinated in 2024 in Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Syria, among others.
Fides’ 2024 report notes that from what little information is available about the circumstances of the missionaries’ lives and deaths, it is evident that “[t]hey are often witnesses and missionaries who selflessly sacrificed their lives to Christ until the end.”
“The missionaries and pastoral workers killed were not in the spotlight,” Fides states, “but worked to bear witness to their faith in everyday life, not only in contexts marked by violence and conflict.”
