Research indicates that of the country’s 30 million Catholics, “almost all of them go to Mass every Sunday.” “And despite all the danger for priests and religious, vocations are increasing.
Newsroom (21/06/2022 11:45 AM, Gaudium Press) The attack on a church on Pentecost Sunday is the latest terrible episode in a string of attacks against the Catholic faith recorded recently in Nigeria.
The media already reports about 100 people dead, following the raid by five armed robbers on the church of San Francisco Javier in Owo, in the south of the country, where they exploded a bomb, called the Pentecost Massacre. But not everyone knows that there is a real springtime of faith in Africa’s most populous country.
Eye Witness Accounts of Large Crowds
In an interview with Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register, Stephen Rasche reports on this flowering. Rasche is a senior researcher at the Religious Liberty Institute and has spent the last two years in this African country working on a Knights of Columbus-funded project on the persecution of Christians in the north of the country.
“Over these past two years I have been able to attend masses in dozens of churches throughout northern and central Nigeria, from cathedrals with a capacity of thousands to small churches in the mountains that can only be accessed by long walks. Everywhere I witnessed the same thing: great joy and deep participation,” declares Rasche.
“It is truly amazing to see a Mass where the entire congregation moves fluently between their native languages, then into English (one of Nigeria’s official languages) and then into Latin hymns and prayers, and then back to their own celebration music. I witnessed incredibly deep and beautiful worship in these dilapidated and half-built churches. And everywhere I’ve been, the churches are growing, they’re really crammed.”
Unbelievable Statistics
One important statistic: of the country’s 30 million Catholics, the researcher says, “almost all of them go to Mass every Sunday.” “And despite all the danger for priests and religious, vocations are increasing. The seminaries are full, and outside the conflict zones there is no place where they are closing churches, quite the opposite.”
Meanwhile, international observers are starting to connect the religious state of the country, and the brutal violence unleashed on the Church in recent years.
Compiled by Camille Mittermeier.
