Twenty Catholic missionaries killed around the world in 2020

Twenty Catholic missionaries were killed around the world in 2020, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies said Wednesday.

Agenzia Fides reported on December 30 that those who lost their lives in the service of the Church were eight priests, three religious, a male religious, two seminarians and six lay people.

As in previous years, the deadliest continents for Church workers were the Americas, where five priests and three lay people were killed this year, and Africa, where a priest, three nuns and a seminarian gave their lives. and two lay people.

The Vatican-based news agency, which was founded in 1927 and publishes an annual list of murdered Church workers, explained that it used the term "missionary" to refer to "all the baptized engaged in the life of the Church who they died in a violent way. "

The figure for 2020 is lower than that of 2019 when Fides reported the death of 29 missionaries. In 2018, 40 missionaries were killed and in 2017 23 died.

Fides affirms: "Also in 2020 many pastoral workers lost their lives during attempts of robbery and robbery, committed ferociously, in impoverished and degraded social contexts, where violence is the rule of life, the authority of the State is lacking or weakened by corruption and compromises and total lack of respect for life and for every human right ".

"None of them have performed surprising feats or actions, but they simply shared the same daily life of the majority of the population, bearing their own evangelical witness as a sign of Christian hope".

Among those killed in 2020, Fides highlighted the Nigerian seminarian Michael Nnadi, who was murdered after being kidnapped by gunmen from the Good Shepherd Seminary of Kaduna on January 8. The 18-year-old is said to have been preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ ”to his captors.

Others killed this year include Fr. Jozef Hollanders, OMI, died during a robbery in South Africa; Sister Henrietta Alokha, killed while trying to save the students of a boarding school in Nigeria after a gas explosion; the sisters Lilliam Yunielka, 12, and Blanca Marlene González, 10, in Nicaragua; and p. Roberto Malgesini, killed in Como, Italy.

The intelligence service also highlighted Church workers who had died while serving others during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Priests are the second category after doctors who have paid with their lives because of COVID in Europe," he said. "According to a partial report by the Council of Bishops' Conferences of Europe, at least 400 priests have died on the continent from the end of February to the end of September 2020 due to COVID".

Fides says that, in addition to the 20 missionaries known to have been killed in 2020, there were probably others.

"The provisional list compiled annually by Fides must therefore be added to the long list of many of whom perhaps there will never be news, who in every corner of the world suffer and even pay with their lives for faith in Christ", we read.

“As Pope Francis recalled during the general audience on April 29:“ The martyrs of today are more numerous than the martyrs of the first centuries. We express our closeness to these brothers and sisters. We are one body and these Christians are the bleeding members of the body of Christ which is the Church '”.