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Through our various ministries and agencies, we exist to serve the people of God, enabling the Gospel of Jesus Christ to come alive in our local community.
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20 November 2025
3 minutes
Kimberley Heatherington and Cecilia Seppia (OSV News)
It’s a stark reality that—no matter how many times it’s repeated—never loses the power to shock: the 20th century produced double the number of Christian martyrs than all the previous 19 centuries put together.
In this century and the present day, religious persecution and discrimination—a frequent precursor to martyrdom—currently affects nearly 5.4 billion people in 62 countries worldwide, according to the Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025.
Released at a Vatican press conference on 21 October by Aid to the Church in Need, a papal charity and pastoral aid organisation assisting persecuted Christians around the world, the report is simultaneously alarming and inspiring: alarming, because so many are still suffering so much violence; inspiring, because their faithful witness is nonetheless so strong.
The Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025 analyses the situation in 196 countries and documents serious violations in 62 of them; 24 are classified as countries of ‘persecution’ and 38 as ‘discrimination’. Only two nations, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka, showed improvements compared with the previous edition of the report.
‘The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, protected under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is not only under pressure; in many countries it is disappearing,’ warned Regina Lynch, executive president of ACN International, during the Vatican launch.
On 5 July 2023, Pope Francis created a working group at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Dubbed the ‘Commission of New Martyrs—Witnesses to the Faith’, it was tasked with compiling a catalogue of all Christians—not only Catholics—who in the last quarter of a century shed their blood to confess Jesus Christ.
‘Martyrs in the Church are witnesses of the hope that comes from faith in Christ and incites to true charity,’ the late Pope said. ‘Hope keeps alive the profound conviction that good is stronger than evil, because God in Christ has conquered sin and death.’
As Aid to the Church in Need reported in a press release on 12 September, the Vatican commission identified and confirmed 1,624 cases of Christians, from various different Christian churches, ‘murdered because of their faith between the year 2000 and 2025’.
It found that ‘643 were killed in Sub-Saharan Africa, 357 in Asia and Oceania, 304 in the Americas, 277 in the Middle East and the Maghreb, and 43 in Europe.’
Andrea Riccardi, vice president of the commission and founder of the peace-building Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic association, said the point of the work is ‘to remember them so that their memory is not diluted and the names of those who have fallen for the faith are not lost’.
Pope Leo XIV has continued to bring attention to the martyrs’ plight. On 14 September, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the pontiff hosted an ‘Ecumenical Commemoration of Martyrs and Witnesses of the Faith of the Twenty-First Century’ in Rome’s Papal Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls.
Joined by representatives of other Christian churches and ecclesial communities, Pope Leo cited the witness of various martyrs before reiterating ‘the ecumenism of blood unites Christians of different backgrounds who together give their lives for faith in Jesus Christ. The witness of their martyrdom is more eloquent than any word: unity comes from the Cross of the Lord.’
Missionaries in Congo denounced the ‘shameful silence’ of the international community as 20 people were killed in a terrorist attack on 14 November at the North Kivu village of Byambwe, in Congo, according to Vatican News.
Pope Leo XIV offered special prayers for the Christian community in North Kivu, where members of the Allied Democratic Forces, a group loyal to Islamic State, attacked a clinic run by the Presentation Sisters, killing 15 people before stealing medications and burning the clinic down.
They went to nearby homes as well, killing another five people, Vatican News reported.
‘Let us pray that all violence may cease and that believers may work together for the common good,’ the Pope said during the Angelus prayer on 16 November.
After the massacre of patients, the ADF set the hospital ablaze, killing several women in the maternity ward.
The attack was confirmed to Vatican News by Fr Giovanni Piumatti, an Italian priest who has served for more than 50 years as a Fidei Donum missionary in the Diocese of Butembo-Beni.
Speaking to Vatican News from Italy, he described the massacre as a ‘typical ADF attack’, in which apart from killing civilians, the terrorists set fire to their homes.
‘Before destroying everything, they looted all the medical supplies—I believe that was their main objective,’ he told Vatican News.
‘Panic spread everywhere. The army pursued them, but despite its efforts, the terrorists escaped. They seem to be better armed and equipped than the regular forces,’ he said.
The missionary highlighted the sophisticated brutality of the ADF forces.
‘What is most tragic—beyond the sheer number of innocent victims—is the way they kill,’ Fr Piumatti said. ‘They slit civilians’ throats, decapitate them—it’s horrific. Here they killed mothers as they were breastfeeding their babies. These massacres are beyond imagination, and they happen almost every week. Many go unreported,’ he told Vatican News.
The same group is believed to have killed at least 43 people, including children, on 27 July in a brutal overnight attack on a Catholic church in Komanda in eastern Congo.
Vatican News said that the Little Sisters of the Presentation who run the hospital in north Kivu, provide vital medical care in a remote area that lacks functioning hospitals. They mainly assist women in childbirth, but the facility also includes clinics and surgical units.
‘The ADF have been active in this region for at least three years,’ Fr Piumatti continued.
‘Many of the fighters come from Uganda. They attack indiscriminately—on the roads, in villages, in the fields while people work. In addition to killing, they kidnap children and young people for training. They often act under the influence of drugs, and they drug the captives they abduct.
‘When preparing an attack, the adults strike first, then force the young recruits to continue the killing with machetes. They are utterly brutal,’ he told the Vatican media outlet.
The sisters, now ministering on the streets, continue to assist survivors however they can.
As of 16 November, there appeared to be no casualties among the sisters, though many newborns are believed to have been kidnapped. ‘It is horrifying and heartbreaking to witness and hear such things,’ Fr Piumatti said.
The missionary priest condemned what he called the ‘shameful silence’ of the international community, denouncing the West’s complicity in supporting certain forms of violence and terrorism for economic gain.
‘Kivu is rich in mineral deposits—a land full of precious resources that has always been contested,’ said Fr Piumatti. ‘That is why these Islamist groups receive backing. The ADF are the most ferocious, but they are not the only ones supplied with weapons and money to keep trade flowing. These conflicts serve commercial interests, and the world’s silence is profoundly troubling.’
This month, the Church observes Red November, an annual international campaign led by the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need. On Wednesday 19 November, more than 600 churches and buildings around the world—including here in Melbourne—were lit red for ‘Red Wednesday’, a powerful visual reminder of the suffering of persecuted Christians.
Banner image: People attend the funeral of victims of a suicide bombing at the Mar Elias Church in Damascus, Syria, on 24 June 2025. The death toll from the 22 June suicide bomb attack at the church rose to at least 25, state media said on 23 June. (Photo: OSV News/Khalil Ashawi, Reuters.)
Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia. Cecilia Seppia is a writer for Vatican News. CNS Rome contributed to the report on the Congo terrorist attack.
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