The role of angels in Christian life is at the centre of this year’s prayer campaign

The leader of the Catholic Church in Kyrgyzstan was in Mongolia, where Pope Francis said that the littleness of the local churches is not a limitation, but a resource for the universal Church.

ACN International denounces the latest attack on the Catholic Church in Nigeria, in which a seminarian was burned to death in the diocese of Kafanchan, as well as the kidnapping of another seminarian in southern Kaduna.

A total of 13 clergymen have been kidnapped in Nigeria since the beginning of 2023, fortunately, all were later released.

When the Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate arrived in Dómuè they were received with great celebration. After 40 years, the Church once again has female faces in this huge parish, located in northeast Mozambique.

There were tears of sadness and fear in Pakistan on Sunday (20th August) as a crowd of 700 attended Mass outside their burnt-out church following one of the country’s worst outbreaks of persecution in a generation.

After 21 Christians were killed and more than 10 critically injured by Fulani militants in Plateau State, Nigeria last week, local sources said similar attacks are becoming more common, and perpetrators are rarely held to account.

Prayer, processions, adoration, catechism, but also plenty of fun was the order of the day as thousands of young Christians gathered in Syria and in Lebanon, physically distant, but emotionally united to the multitude who were in Lisbon with Pope Francis.

Nearly 1,000 panic-stricken Christians in Pakistan spent the night in sugar cane fields, having narrowly escaped rampaging mobs who set about targeting their homes, destroying everything down to the last lightbulb.

Up to 15 church buildings have been attacked and hundreds of Christian homes destroyed after extremists went on a rampage in Pakistan.

In some parts of Africa, children who are born with disabilities are considered evil and often killed.

A Catholic archbishop in northeast India, who has seen his diocese at the centre of a wave of deadly attacks, has issued an urgent appeal for prayers “to transform the minds of the people who are led by hatred and religious violence.”

George Akroush is the director of the Project Development Office at the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. In an interview with ACN, he speaks about the plans for renewing pastoral work among the Christians in the Holy Land.

Tens of thousands of young people took part in a variety of ACN initiatives during World Youth Day in Lisbon (WYD).

“You cross the Amazon jungle, climb 5,000 metres above sea level, in the Andes Mountains, you head into the desert. You are now in what Pope Francis calls ‘the land of saints’”, says Luis Vildoso, director of projects for ACN in Peru.

The leader of Iraq’s largest Christian community has condemned a Presidential order overturning a decree which recognises him as Patriarch, calling the move “offensive” and the climax of a campaign to seize control of the Church’s assets.

Almost exactly nine years after hundreds of thousands of Christians were forced to flee from their homes due to the occupation of their lands by ISIS, efforts continue to rebuild lives and infrastructure.

Just over 60 young men are currently undergoing formation in the propaedeutic Abbot Kaumo seminary of Kasongo, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.