News

Good Friday holiday reinstated in Christian-majority Indian state after protests

  March 29, 2018 India BJP, Christmas, Digital India Day, Good Governance Day, Gujarat, Hindu nationalism, India, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Narendra Modi, Religious freedom

Widespread protests have forced the government in Christian-majority Meghalaya State in north-east India to restore the Good Friday holiday. The coalition government, to which the Hindu nationalist BJP is a partner, had declared in a circular that Good Friday would be a normal “working day”, but the move was withdrawn . . . Read More

India: Telangana Christians ‘terrified’ after Palm Sunday attack

  March 29, 2018 India BJP, Hindu nationalism, Hyderabad, India, Palm Sunday, Telangana

World Watch Monitor has received a set of photographs showing the aftermath of an attack on a church service in India’s southern Telangana State on Sunday, 25 March. Trusted local sources reported that a group of Hindu extremists entered the Sheloha Prayer House in Hyderabad, the state capital, at around 10am, . . . Read More

Turkey’s Churches publish landmark book of common Christian doctrine

  March 28, 2018 Turkey Armenians, Catholics, Haghia Sophia, Istanbul, Orthodox, Patriarch Bartholomew I, Protestants, Turkey

A joint commission of Turkey’s major Christian denominations has published an historic book of concise Christian doctrine, receiving the unprecedented endorsement of all the nation’s Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian, Syriac and Protestant Churches. According to Armenian Bishop Sahak Masalyan, keynote speaker at the formal book launch in Istanbul of the English . . . Read More

Eritrea: Newlyweds among 32 Christians arrested in fresh crackdown

  March 28, 2018 Eritrea Asmara, Eritrea, Human rights, Religious freedom

Eritrean police have arrested 32 Christians in the capital, Asmara, this month, including a newlywed couple and ten of their guests. Twenty were arrested on Sunday, 25 March, all of whom remain in detention. The newly married man and two of his guests are being held in a prison north of . . . Read More

Dozens killed in CAR, including priest who planned to move

  March 28, 2018 Central African Republic Anti-balaka, Antonio Guterres, Bambari, Bangassou, Bangui, Catholics, Central African Republic, Gambo, Seleka, UN, UPC

Dozens, including a Catholic priest, were killed last week as fighting erupted between armed groups in several villages in southern Central African Republic. Father Joseph Désiré Angbabata, 49, the parish priest of Séko village, near Bambari, lost his life when armed men stormed his village parish of Saint Charles LWANGA . . . Read More

Elderly Christian woman murdered in India – family say she was targeted, police say killer ‘mad’

  March 27, 2018 India Andhra Pradesh, Hindu nationalism, India, Police, Women

The body of an elderly Christian woman was found in a pool of blood on the terrace of her house in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh state last Wednesday, 21 March. Chadarajupalli Subbaravamma, who was in her mid-sixties and converted to Christianity ten years ago, was last seen by her family . . . Read More

Palm Sunday celebrations mark revival of life in Qaraqosh

  March 26, 2018 Iraq Iraq, Islamic State, Nineveh Plains, Palm Sunday, Qaraqosh

For many Christian families in Qaraqosh, this Easter is particularly special, as they will be celebrating it at home for the first time since fleeing the city in 2014. The city, located in northern Iraq’s Nineveh Plains, was occupied by the Islamic State group for over two years before its . . . Read More

Pakistan court acquits 20 in case of Christian couple burnt alive

  March 26, 2018 Pakistan Blasphemy, Bonded labourers, Lahore, Minorities, Pakistan, Punjab, Quran, Shahzad Masih, Shama Bibi

An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Lahore, Pakistan, on Saturday (24 March) acquitted 20 men suspected of involvement in the murder of a Christian couple burnt alive at the kiln where they worked in November 2014 – after it was alleged that they had set fire to some pages from a Quran. . . . Read More

Egyptian mob celebrates blocking application for new church

  March 26, 2018 Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Copts, Egypt, Qena, Upper Egypt

Mob rule has stopped hundreds of Christians in a village in Upper Egypt building their first church, World Watch Monitor has learned from local Copts. The nearest church for the 500 Copts living in El Toud, in Qena Governorate, is 10km away. So, since 2007, they have used the home . . . Read More

Alexandria Palm Sunday bombing, one year on – lone dad who lost his wife, uncle and nephew

  March 23, 2018 Egypt Alexandria, Copts, Egypt, Islamic extremism, Palm Sunday

On Palm Sunday 2017, Magid was selling palm branches with his wife and son by the gate of St Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria, Egypt, when a suicide bomber detonated his device near them, killing Magid’s wife, Hannan. Eight worshippers, four Muslim police officers and four Muslim passers-by were killed, and 35 . . . Read More