"How can we understand that fighters have been operating freely for over two weeks in the same area, attacking village after village, without any effective response from the security forces?... The population feels abandoned to its fate, exposed to massacres while official speeches multiply without any visible action on the ground." 

barnabasaid.org, January 27, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"On Jan. 1, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) "released an image of one of the Christian villages in Adamawa State burning, alongside a statement saying that all Christians in Nigeria are legitimate targets, and they have an opportunity to 'spare their blood' by converting to Islam or paying the jizyah tax to ISWAP."

dailypost.ng, January 1, 2026, Nigeria.

 "Iran has an open secret. Persecuting Christians is a booming business in the Muslim-majority nation, and the country is earning large sums of money from arresting Christ followers." — 

persecution.org, January 22, 2026.

"ADF uses abduction, forced conversion to Islam, gang rape, and child soldier recruitment as a deliberate strategy to terrorize and reduce the Christian population in eastern Congo." — 

persecution.org, January 22, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

"According to a Jan. 22 report, in 2025, the Islamic-linked Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) intensified their terror against Christian communities by deliberately targeting children. Militants raid Christian villages, kill parents in front of their children, and abduct boys and girls. Captured children are taken to ADF base camps where they are forced to convert to Islam or be killed." 

Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute 

On January 2, the Allied Democratic Forces, which is linked to the Islamic State, attacked three villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Christian-majority nation, killing at least 14. Since December 2024, Islamic State terrorists have claimed the murder of more than 800 Christians in northeastern DRC. Pictured: Members of the Congolese Red Cross bury the bodies of victims of a massacre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo at Musigiko cemetery in Bukavu on February 20, 2025. (Photo by Luis Tato/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Following his 11-day trip to Africa, Pope Leo XIV returned to the Vatican to continue his condemnation of the Israel-U.S. conflict in Iran. His Africa trip consisted of visits to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, and while there he continued his vocal activism against war, specifically the conflict taking place in Iran. He let it be known he has no intention of pulling back his moral outrage over conflict and the death toll it takes on the lives of the populations involved. 

 

He waxed eloquently in just condemnation against cupidity, human greed and deliberate oblivion to the human wreckage that war brings through political tyranny, corruption, neo-colonialism, inequality and the extraction of natural resources destroying environmental landscapes. If one was not aware this was the Pope speaking to his 1.4 worldwide followers and beyond, his censorious rebukes could have been mistaken for Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in a fully woke rejection of world affairs.

 

Pope Leo XIV's trip did not include Nigeria, where Christians are under constant threat, nor the Democratic Republic of Congo where Islamist terrorist groups focus on slaughtering Christians who practise a religion offensive to Islam. What Pope Leo did do, was bring to the Vatican library a new initiative in opening an Islamic prayer room. For whose use it has not been clarified beyond the convenience of 'visiting Muslim scholars', but the move did attract some censure from some within the orthodox Catholic clergy.

 

Within the hallowed halls of the Vatican Apostolic Library, a repository of human knowledge that has stood since the mid-15th century, a quiet and unprecedented decision has ignited a firestorm that spans faith, diplomacy, and realpolitik. The library’s administration, under Vice Prefect Fr. Giacomo Cardinali, has allocated a dedicated room for Muslim prayers, a move that has simultaneously been celebrated as a gesture of intellectual openness and condemned as a betrayal of Catholic identity. Catholic Stand

 

The "quiet pope" spoke with moral passion in Cameroon at a "handful of tyrants" and "masters of war" whose exploits have "ravaged" the world while they "pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy,  yet a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild." Pope Leo let it also be known that it was "not in my interest" to debate the president [Trump]; censure is as censure does. 

"I think unquestionably [Leos papacy] has grown in recent weeks']."

"I think Leo remains the Quiet American, but he is also the lion pope who has found his roar."

Vatican watcher and  biographer of Pope Francis, Austen Ivereigh

 

"The perceived change in tone is due to the escalation of events -- the bombings in Iran, the African trip, the head-on-clash -- which have forced [his] words to become more explicit."

"But the vision was already right there, right beneath the surface."

"[Leo's] dilemma lies between diplomacy and prophecy, and it's the same as Francis, who at a certain point surrendered to the idea that he was the last moral voice of global value standing."

"I believe Leo feels the same and is finding his bearings." 

Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education  

Israel and the United States have taken on the obligation of ensuring that a theocratic fundamentalist totalitarian Islamist state not gain nuclear armaments with which to threaten the world community. They have, in a tandem of cooperation, decided to respond to the appeal of ordinary Iranians groaning under the persecution of a controlling military doing the bidding of medieval-minded theocrats that threaten the well-being of a population harnessed to a regime whose sole purpose is Islamist conquest. 

 

It is notable that Pope Leo made no public statements that might be taken as regret that the regime he defends has subjected its people to extraordinarily harsh judgments resulting in capital punishment where the Islamic Republic makes use of construction cranes to slowly hang prisoners sentenced to death, to ensure their fate becomes familiar to a public thus warned that the regime will tolerate no level of protest from its citizens. 

 

Several months ago mass protests against the harsh misrule of that ancient country by its ruling ayatollahs saw tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered as punishment, many more imprisoned. Hundreds of Iranians are put to death annually. Women are raped in prisons prior to their executions following trials finding them guilty of such inconsequential 'crimes' as defying regime authorities and calling for its downfall. Drug traffickers are routinely sentenced to death in a country whose regime believes people who interfere with government edicts are disposable.

Below are the 10 most dangerous African countries to be a Christian in 2024:

Rank	Country	Score
1	Somalia	93
2	Libya	91
3	Eritrea	89
4	Nigeria	88
5	Sudan	87
6	Mali	79
7	Algeria	79
8	Burkina Faso	75
9	Mauritania	72
10	Morocco	71

Pope Leo does not appear to have troubled himself over the African countries where Christian lives are threatened, where Islam rules. He appears not to have made any overtures to Islamic leaders in these countries to plead for the lives of Black African Christians where, in fact, Christian belief is on the rise even as it is increasingly threatened by hostile Black African Islamists. So when will the Holy See 'notice' that deadly persecution and break its silence?

 

Global Christian Relief

 

"[The] delusion of omnipotence [that is fuelling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran must stop]."

"Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!"

"[Praying for peace is a way to] break the demonic cycle of evil [to build instead the Kingdom of God where there are no swords, drones or] unjust profit."

"It is here that we find a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive."

"Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death."

"[God] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. Even though you may make many prayers, I will not listen -- your hands are full of blood [Isaiah]." 

Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV presides over a prayer vigil and rosary for peace in St Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on 11 April. Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

"They're two white guy boomers but they could not be any more different in their life experiences, in their values, in the way they have chosen to live those values."

"This is a very stark contrast, and I think an inflection point for American Christianity."

"There's no question about his [Pope Leo's] inflection and meaning. It removes any ambiguities."

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, theology professor, Fordham University

 

"For the last five centuries, the church has been involved in a project of helping develop strong international norms [including the Geneva Conventions in recent centuries]."

"It is a very long-standing tradition rooted in Scripture and theology and philosophy."

Professor William Barbieri, Catholic University  

The first American pope has taken to directly criticizing the American president over the war in Iran, when Pope Leo declared President Trump's "belligerence is truly unacceptable". Two polarized world views, one on the part of the 79-year-old U.S. President, the second a 70-year-old pontiff from Chicago. Coevals in time, sharing common cultural roots with distinct oppositional attitudes they bring to their positions of immense power and influence. 

 

Leo's opposition to the war in Iran, according to Catholic Church experts, reflects established church teachings, quite aside from the politics of the time. Speaking of an American administration in the 
White House with close links to conservative evangelical Protestantism which claims Trump's war on Iran is backed by heavenly endorsement. Americans were urged by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pray for victory "in the name of Jesus Christ". As for President Trump, asked whether he felt God approved of the war, replied: "I do, because God is good -- because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of."

 

President Trump's response alludes to the plight of the Iranian people, held in thrall to a radical, fundamental tyranny of theocratic jihadists whose goal is conquest of mind and soul packaged into a submission to Islam as the only true religion, through the Shi'ite version specifically. A theocracy that has exemplified in its foundational belief in worldwide conversion to wipe all other religious devotion out of contention. Beginning with world Jewry and Israel, then on to Christianity, and Buddhism, Hinduism and others will fall into place, and be no more with conquest completed.

 

On its way to that conquest beginning with its own Iranian population almost a half-century ago, complete restraints on civil society; all forced to adhere to the version of Islam that demanded full obeisance in faith through complete surrender of self in the interests of the idolized Ruhollah Khomeini who took up the Prophet Mohammad's scimitar and wielded it with the passion of the celestially nominated. The Ayatollah who tasked the Islamic Republican Guard Corps with stifling the spirit of Iranians, who assigned the al Quds division the task of forming, training, arming and dispatching Shia terror militias on missions abroad.

 

Investing in them the full authority, under his unquestioned own to supervise uranium enrichment for use in nuclear technology, while perfecting the range and power of ballistic missiles capable of taking warheads vast distances. This is a nation dedicated to performing its obligations to the foremost directive for the faithful in the sacred scripts demanding non-stop jihad for full transformation from false gods to the only religious devotion recognizing the sole Divine Eminence. 

 

Iranians, women in particular, forced to appear in public only garbed in black all-encompassing garb, paid dearly for their transgressions of occasional passionate rejection of the demands for absence while present in their gender-obscuring garments that offered no protection from rape and murder at the behest of the authorities. Mass demonstrations of youth demanding freedom and liberty to live as human beings earned themselves the freedom to take the lethal brunt of the regime's response. Iran's vast oil wealth failed to trickle through to improving the civilian population's lives, but flowed extravagantly in support of terror.

 

What would be the Catholic Church's solution to a population of 93 million people in thrall to terror crying out for rescue from their ill fate?  What has Pope Leo to say of a nation whose leaders continuously threaten to eradicate the Jewish State of Israel from the Middle East, and which has exported its Jew-hate propaganda throughout Europe and North America? What has Pope Leo to say of Islamists in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America targeting Christians in faith to jihad? 

The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the second world war, according to a book that pulls together evidence from unpublished documents.

The Red Cross has previously acknowledged that its efforts to help refugees were used by Nazis because administrators were overwhelmed, but the research suggests the numbers were much higher than thought.

Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The documents include Red Cross travel documents issued mistakenly to Nazis in the postwar chaos.

They throw light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others evaded capture by the allies.

By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents, Steinacher says Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947, many on the basis of valid documents issued mistakenly.

The documents – which are discussed in Steinacher's book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's henchmen fled justice – offer a significant insight into Vatican thinking, particularly, because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment.

Steinacher believes the Vatican's help was based on a hoped-for revival of European Christianity and dread of the Soviet Union. But through the Vatican Refugee Commission, war criminals were knowingly provided with false identities.

The Red Cross, overwhelmed by millions of refugees, relied substantially on Vatican references and the often cursory Allied military checks in issuing travel papers, known as 10.100s.

The Guardian 

SS officers at Auschwitz in 1944. From left: Richard Baer, who became the commandant of Auschwitz in May 1944, Josef Mengele, commandant of Birkenau Josef Kramer, hidden, and the former commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, foreground; the man on the right is unidentified. Photograph: AP

  

"What Pope Leo and Donald Trump have in common is they both lived through the postwar polarization [including the political upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War]."

"In some ways he's [Leo] just like us, [someone] who understands where our domestic political crisis came from [unlike the Argentinian Francis] who did not fully understand the peculiarities of the United States [even as he offered implicit criticism]."

Professor Steven Millies, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago