November is the busiest month for us in Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). It is additionally the most special as annually we focus in a special way on those who have fallen for their precious faith. The martyrs of yesterday, today, and sadly even the future.
November, typically a month we Christians associate with praying for our dead, provides us with the opportune time to call to mind those who were unyielding and doubtless in their commitment to Christ.
The Week of Witness, celebrated this year between 15 and 22 November, encourages you to remember the heroic sacrifice of these men and women and highlight the present injustices Christians are facing around the world because of their precious faith.
Contained in the Week of Witness is Red Wednesday where participants are invited to wear red to symbolise the blood of the martyrs – blood still being shed today. Churches around the country will become illuminated in the colour of red and prayers will be made for the cessation of Christian persecution around the world.
The event is one of our principal means of advocacy and usually is where people become aware of our mission to ensure that Christians around the world are given the opportunity to flourish, irrespective of the country or circumstance that they are in.
The Week of Witness acts as the perfect backdrop to remind our brothers and sisters, situated in more peaceful parts of the world, that the world remains a scary and threatening place for other Christians around the world and sadly, this trend only seems to be getting worse.
Our latest Religious Freedom Report, published late last year, is a sobering insight into the hostile attitudes to Christianity around the world. ACN has gauged, extraordinarily, that there is no more dangerous time to be a Christian, notwithstanding various gruesome points in history, than it is to be a Christian now.
Our report found that 413 million Christians live in countries where religious freedom is severely violated, with 220 million directly exposed to persecution.
62 countries in the world commit grave violations against religious freedom – 24 under the ‘persecution’ category and 38 under the ‘discrimination’ category.
The persecution category is the most severe tier, characterised by systemic, state-sanctioned violence, active extermination, or the total legal erasure of religious practice.
The discrimination category is the second-most serious category, involving bureaucratised intolerance, institutional disadvantages, or targeted legal restrictions meant to suppress church operations.
In our report, we have discerned that there are three key drivers that perpetuate systems that persecute Christians.
The first is authoritarianism and systemic repression. Authoritarian regimes are identified as the principal drivers of faith repression globally. Governments increasingly weaponise technology and law to enforce what we describe as a ‘bureaucratisation of religious repression’.
This is most apparent in countries such as China and Nicaragua, two countries under a communist ethos. Here, authorities deploy mass surveillance networks, digital censorship, and arbitrary detentions to control or forcefully shut down independent Christian communities.
Authoritarian regimes are increasingly sharing their sophisticated tracking and digital containment systems with other hostile nations to consolidate the suppression of underground churches
The second driver is Jihadism, which is ravaging parts of Africa and the Middle East. Jihadist insurgencies continue to rapidly expand across Africa and Asia, serving as the main cause of persecution in 15 different nations.
The African Sahel has now become the global epicentre of Jihadist violence. Islamist groups systematically target Christian-majority villages, resulting in mass casualties, the displacement of millions, and the destruction of hundreds of churches and Christian schools. We have noted that a ‘silent displacement of believers’ has emerged, forcing Christian families to leave their generational homes and flee to safety.
The recent developments in Nigeria have been a serious cause for concern, with areas in the north of the country being devastated by Islamist groups like Boko Haram and extremist Fulani herdsman.
The third and final driver of modern religious persecution is ethno-religious nationalism. This is most prevalent in several Asian nations and involves ruling political powers promoting an ethno-religious identity that deliberately excludes minority faiths.
In India, we have noticed the emergence of a dangerous model of ‘hybrid persecution’. This consists of a combination of state-level anti-conversion laws (enacted in 13 states) alongside civilian-led violence against Christian assemblies, which is frequently enabled or excused by political rhetoric.
In Myanmar, entrenched civil conflict and state-backed religious nationalism have also led to severe legal exclusion and direct aggression toward Christian ethnic minorities.
A great deal of our work is done in the Holy Land, especially in areas such as Bethlehem, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Taybah, spanning both Palestine and Israel. We are tremendously proud to be the largest donor of the Latin Patriarchate in the Holy Land and fund the running of the generator in Gaza’s only Catholic church, Holy Family Church, which is led by the heroic Fr Gabriel Romanelli.
Our biggest priority is ensuring that Christians in the Holy Land, the first Christians, have a reason to stay amid all of the economic and social uncertainty. We fund job creation schemes in most Middle Eastern countries to ensure that Christians have the ability to diversify their skills to gain work more easily.
This is crucial in the Holy Land where a significant portion of the Christian work force is reliant on tourism for employment, which of course, has not been forthcoming since the outbreak of war in 2023.
It really pains us to have to admit this but the unprecedented insecurity Christians are facing is no more evident than in the demographic collapse of Christianity in some of the world’s most sacred places – places that are instrumental to the faith.
In the Holy Land, the lands where Jesus walked, the Christian population has fallen to less than 2% of the total regional population, down from roughly 10% to 12% in the early-to-mid 20th century.
Christians face harassment and extremism on a daily basis, with Church leaders reporting a rise in extremist property vandalism, physical assaults, hate graffiti, and restrictions on accessing major holy sites like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Jewish settlers, emboldened by extreme political representatives, confiscate Christian land and property, property that has been part of the fabric of Christian families for centuries.
The Christian population in Syria has dropped sharply from approximately 10% of the total population before 2011 to an estimated 2%, or around 300,000 people. Over 75% of Syrian Christians have been displaced or have emigrated abroad since the civil conflict began.
The key causes of the decline primarily revolve around years of intense conflict forcing hundreds of thousands of Christians to flee to neighbouring countries like Lebanon, as well as to Europe and North America.
ISIS and other hardline groups targeting Christian communities have also played a major role, resulting in the destruction of over 120 churches, the desecration of holy sites, and the confiscation of property.
Christians in Lebanon have declined from making up a majority (around 60% to 70%) a century ago to roughly 32% to 34% of the resident population today.
Widespread economic collapse, political instability, and recurring conflicts have driven many young Christians to leave the country. Real estate sales in historically Christian rural and coastal areas to buyers from other religious communities have further altered local demographic balances.
Iraq’s ancient Christian population has dropped dramatically from about 1.5 million in 2003 to fewer than 150,000 today.
The 2014 militant assault and seizure of Mosul displaced over 100,000 Christians, destroying historic towns and churches in the Nineveh Plains.
Continued threats from local militias, pressure from Shiite groups, property seizures, and economic hardships have pushed families to leave. Christians now make up less than 1% of Iraq’s total population.
Further to the east in Pakistan, official census figures highlighted a drop in the Christian share of the population from 1.59% in 1998 down to roughly 1.37% today.
Stringent blasphemy laws impose severe penalties, including the death penalty, for perceived blasphemy. Christians frequently face a disproportionate share of false accusations arising from personal or workplace disputes. Many Christians are subjected to false allegations around desecrating the Quran and are punished by Sharia courts just so Christians can be driven from a specific area.
A vast majority of Pakistani Christians work in low-paying, menial jobs and face systemic discrimination in employment and education. Occasionally they experience forced evictions from informal settlements. Many Christian children are forced to work in the bonded labour industry, a form of slavery, by making bricks.
Periodic mob violence, attacks on churches, and forced conversions of young minority girls create an atmosphere of insecurity that prompts many professionals and educated youth to seek asylum or new lives abroad.
These are just some of the horrific challenges facing Christians in this part of the world. So many are reliant on our solidarity, on our advocacy, to shine a light on the disgusting inequality that our brothers and sisters face to a western audience that is largely unaware.
If we all come together this Week of Witness to reflect on the suffering of some of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world, millions of Christians worldwide will be so grateful to find out that they are not alone with their plight.
So please join us this Week of Witness with a Mass, talk, prayer, social media post, or whatever way suits you best and let suffering Christians feel the light of Christ in their troubled times.
To find out more about ACN’s Week of Witness, log onto acnireland.org or email brandon.scott@acnireland.org
Brandon Scott is Communications, Advocacy, and Promotions Officer for ACN Ireland