News & Views

News and Views

1 month ago

Religious Fighting in eastern Congo, which has more than 120 armed groups, has simmered for years but spiked in late 2021 with the resurgence of the M23 group, which had been largely dormant for nearly a decade. The rebels have captured swaths of land and are accused by the United Nations of committing atrocities against civilians. Eastern Congo is also increasingly grappling with violence linked to Islamic militants. In January, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for killing at least 14 people […]

News and Views

March 1, 2023

Religious A federal bankruptcy judge approved a $121 million reorganization plan for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in New Mexico, one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. as it tries to stem financial losses from clergy abuse claims that date back decades. The global priest abuse scandal has plunged dioceses around the world into bankruptcy and has cost the Roman Catholic Church an estimated $3 billion or more. — AP, 12/29/2022 A recent outbreak of attacks in Uganda against […]

News and Views

January 1, 2023

Religious Northern Ireland has more Catholics than Protestants for the first time, census results showed, a historic shift that some see as likely to help drive support for the region to split from Britain and join a united Ireland. — Reuters, 9/22/2022 Members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom criticized a recently renewed Vatican deal with China, saying it emboldens the Chinese government to crackdown on Christian communities. The secretive provisional agreement originally signed in 2018 and renewed Oct. 2, […]

News and Views

November 1, 2022

Religious Nigeria led the world in Christians killed for their faith in the twelve months ended September 2021, at 4,650, up from 3,530 the previous year, according to Open Doors’ 2022 World Watch List report. The number of kidnapped Christians was also highest in Nigeria, at more than 2,500, up from 990 the previous year, according to the WWL report. Nigeria trailed only China in the number of churches attacked, with 470 cases, according to the report. In the 2022 World Watch […]

News and Views

September 1, 2022

Religious Moscow’s chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, is “in exile” after resisting Kremlin pressure to support the war in Ukraine, his daughter-in-law has said. Goldschmidt, who also heads the Conference of European Rabbis, left Russia just weeks after it launched its invasion of Ukraine, saying he had to take care of his ailing father in Jerusalem. But his daughter-in-law revealed that Goldschmidt and his wife had also been put under official pressure to support the war and now considered themselves to be in […]