Nigeria: bishops demand protection for slaughtered Christians

The bishops of Nigeria have publicly called on their country's authorities to guarantee the protection and rights of Christians, amid a wave of massacres and kidnappings that has struck Christian communities, their villages, their priests and their seminarians for years. Faithful are killed in their own homes; clergy are gunned down or carried off into captivity. The world too often files these deaths under the convenient label of « communal clashes ». The Church knows their true name: persecution.

Since the first blood was shed, the Church has never read martyrdom any other way. Beneath the altar of Heaven a cry rises: « I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God… How long, O Lord, dost thou not judge and revenge our blood? » That blood is not wasted. In the ancient saying, it is seed: the Church that bleeds in Nigeria is not broken — she grows. And to those slain for the Name, the promise stands without appeal: « Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. »

Let us measure the facts by that standard, which also judges the living. To protect the innocent is not a favour the State grants: it is the first duty for which it bears the sword. « He beareth not the sword in vain… he is God's minister. » An authority that lets its own be slaughtered and looks away betrays the very charge God entrusted to it; the bishops' demand is therefore no political petition, but the reminder of a justice owed. We do not answer hatred with hatred: we pray for the martyrs, we demand for the living the protection due to them, and we do not forget — when others already have — that these Christians are our brothers.

Sources. Apocalypse VI, 9-10; Gospel according to Saint Matthew, V, 10; Epistle to the Romans XIII, 4 (Vulgate). Tertullian, Apology, L: « the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians ». Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the Fifth Commandment.