With more than 230 million people, Nigeria is the sixth most populous country in the world and by far the most populous in Africa. It is home to as many as 100 million Christians, including 35 million Catholics. But ethnic and religious tensions, primarily between Muslims and Christians, have made the West African nation one of the world’s deadliest hotbeds of religious persecution.
Although the Christian and Muslim populations are both large — Christians make up about 46% of the population and Muslims 53% — Christians are a distinct and persecuted minority in several regions. Particularly in north and central Nigeria, Christians face barriers to health care access, education and employment.
The persecution is also frequently violent, with numbers that speak for themselves: More than 18,000 churches destroyed in northern Nigeria since 2009; at least 16,000 Christians killed for their faith between 2019 and 2023; and 5 million more displaced from their homes. It is particularly challenging in the north, where 12 states have instituted sharia law and where Boko Haram and other jihadist groups are most active.
And yet, the Catholic Church in Nigeria continues to grow, the threat of persecution not diminishing the flame of faith — as evidenced by the tens of thousands of people, including many former Muslims, who enter the Church every year.
“During the Boko Haram insurgency between 2014 and 2017, we thought, as religious leaders, that our churches were going to be empty,” said Bishop Stephen Dami Mamza of the northeastern Diocese of Yola. “But not at all. Rather, the more we are persecuted, the stronger our people become.”
In August 2024, Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly announced in his annual report that the Order would assist the afflicted Church in Nigeria through new initiatives of charity and faith formation — building upon the Order’s history of support for persecuted Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere. This includes sponsoring a collaboration between the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria and Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, to establish a national catechetical institute in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
“This crisis is a call to action. So we asked Nigeria’s bishops how we can help,” Supreme Knight Kelly said during his annual report at the 142nd Supreme Convention. “Their answer was unequivocal. They need us to help their people stand strong in the face of persecution — by spreading the hope that comes from faith.”
‘NO ONE COMES TO OUR AID’
In 2018, Father John Ferdinand was away from his parish in the Diocese of Yola, when in the middle of the night insurgents of Boko Haram attacked the compound where his church and rectory were located.
Militants subdued the parish’s security guard and forced him to show them where the priests lived. Fortunately, the associate priest and other people in the compound heard the commotion and fled for safety. But when the security guard also tried to flee, the attackers attacked him with a machete and left him for dead.
The survivors returned to bring the security guard to the hospital, where he received treatment and temporarily recovered. But the machete had been lined with poison that remained in his body, and he died within two years.
The associate priest tried to file a police report the night of the attack, but the authorities did not respond until well into the next morning and made only a cursory review of the crime scene. No one was ever investigated or brought to justice for the crime.
“Almost every day, we have to be on guard for an attack,” Father Ferdinand said. “But because we are Christian, no one comes to our aid.”
Some incidents make international headlines, like the university student killed in May 2022 by a mob of classmates for allegedly making critical remarks about Islam, or the 47 people massacred in Nigeria’s Middle Belt on Christmas Day 2024. But many more receive little to no attention or outrage outside of Nigeria.
A recent study from the Nigeria Catholic Network found that more than 200 priests and seminarians have been kidnapped across the country in the past decade, and 15 died as a result — not including others who were killed by other intentional acts of violence.
“Usually when these things happen, the government does not do anything tangible,” said Father Joseph Ekwoanya of the northwestern Diocese of Sokoto. “They don’t seek to bring about justice. … The people who have done the evil deeds walk freely, because tacitly, not explicitly, they have the support of the Islamic leaders and the Islamic population.”
The priests said that in states with a Muslim ruling class, especially in the north, Christians are often barred from getting jobs or attending school, contributing to poverty within the Catholic community. Essential services such as electricity and water are withheld, and some governments won’t build schools in predominantly Christian communities.
When Boko Haram or another militant group sweeps through an area, they routinely burn houses and terrorize residents, leaving behind ghost towns, Father Ferdinand explained. Sometimes, extremists will wait for harvest season just so they can send an entire year’s work up in flames.
REPRISING A FAMILIAR ROLE
For several years, Father Ferdinand has helped lead interreligious dialogue in the Diocese of Yola. And while leaders from other religions, including Islam, express sympathy and outrage at the Christians’ plight, those sentiments are often left at the discussion table.
“As religious leaders, we decide that we should go back to our churches and mosques to preach peace,” he said. “But you see, when we go back, it’s a different thing.”
Millions of Christians, discouraged by the constant danger and threat of persecution, have abandoned their homes in the north for displacement camps in other parts of the country. And for those who stay, access to the sacraments and formation to sustain their faith is often sparse.
“On the one hand, the persecution has deepened their faith,” said Stephen Rasche, a lawyer turned full-time missionary to the Middle East and Africa. “But that doesn’t diminish the reality of the difficulty that they’re facing.”
Rasche, a member of Potomac Council 433 in Washington, D.C., has worked closely with the Knights for the past decade to aid persecuted Christians and other religious minorities, including the victims of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
In 2014, the Knights of Columbus established the Christian Refugee Relief Fund to provide humanitarian aid, through local churches, to those targeted for genocide. The fund raised more than $25 million, and in 2017, then-Supreme Knight Carl Anderson announced the Order’s support for the Nineveh Reconstruction Project, an effort led by Rasche to help rebuild liberated cities and allow hundreds of Iraqi Christian families to return to the homes they fled from during the persecution.
As anti-Christian persecution in Nigeria increased, Rasche began traveling there, with K of C support, to assess if efforts similar to those in the Middle East could provide relief to local communities. Along with local Church representatives, Rasche has worked to develop best practices for Nigerian dioceses to raise awareness of the persecution and secure financial assistance from around the world, in addition to coordinating the Order’s aid to the region.
Ensuring the health of a growing Nigerian Church, Rasche said, is as important as the material aid that can be offered — and the Knights of Columbus offers both.
“It’s one thing to baptize and confirm,” he said. “It’s another thing to properly catechize the youngsters and [converts] so that they have a firm foundation in the Church. And the Knights of Columbus is playing a critical role in that.”
HOPE ROOTED IN FAITH
The centerpiece of the Order’s support is the proposed Catechetical Institute of Nigeria, fittingly located in Abuja, the nation’s capital and geographical center. The ultimate goal for the institute, Church leaders say, is to form and educate catechists to minister in each of the country’s 60 dioceses.
To this end, the Nigerian bishops have partnered with Franciscan University of Steubenville, specifically its renowned Catechetical Institute, to help develop catechetical materials, spiritual formation programs, and digital assets that will serve the Church in Nigeria as well as several other English-speaking West African countries.
“The people are yearning to hear the Word of God. The faith is booming; the people are willing. And yet, we are still looking for people who are educated to know and disseminate the faith.
The first phase of the project, the entirety of which is funded by a grant from the Supreme Council, is currently underway. Six individuals — two priests, two religious sisters, and two laypeople — selected by the Nigerian bishops’ conference to run the institute are pursuing graduate studies in theology at Franciscan University. Next year, four more catechists will participate in a four-month intensive catechetical program that will train them to better serve their dioceses.
Father Ferdinand, Father Sunday Yunana of the Diocese of Bauchi, in northern Nigeria, and Femi Emmanuel Adeojo, the bishops’ conference’s national secretary for evangelization, are three members of the first, key cohort; the other three cohort members remain in Nigeria due to visa issues. Father Ekwoanya, while not a member of the cohort, is also at the university studying for a doctorate in theology.
Arriving in the small Rust Belt city in eastern Ohio last fall was certainly a culture shock, said Adeojo, but “one of the first things we told ourselves [before arriving] is that we are not coming only for the academic knowledge. There is a missionary spirit we need to imbibe.”
In addition to Franciscan’s master of theology program, the cohort will participate in a catechetical fellowship program that includes mentorships from catechetical leaders, designing the curriculum for the Nigerian institute, and preparing an online formation system accessible via the internet throughout English-speaking Africa to assist catechists at the local level.
The latter is especially important, the cohort explained, because it is almost impossible to evangelize over the airwaves: Nigerian law forbids religious-based organizations or individuals from owning radio or television stations to disseminate their faith. But upper-class Muslims can buy airtime and work around the law. Christians — impoverished due to persecution — do not have the means to do the same.
Father Yunana, who in Nigeria oversaw a parish with 32 separate churches, said pastors are doing their best to catechize and evangelize but often need help reaching all their people.
“The people are yearning to hear the Word of God,” he said. “The faith is booming; the people are willing. And yet, we are still looking for people who are educated to know and disseminate the faith.”
‘LOVE IS MEANT FOR ALL’
Beyond the catechetical initiative, the K of C support for persecuted Christians in Nigeria includes material aid for those suffering. Thanks to a grant from the Knights, about 70 new hospitals beds were recently purchased to replace beds nearly a century old, dating back to the British occupation of Nigeria. There are also plans to help fund ultrasound machines at Nigerian hospitals in the future.
Recently, in partnership with the Canadian Wheelchair Foundation, the Order organized distributions at three locations in Nigeria — Sokoto, Yola and Ogoja in the south — delivering nearly 100 wheelchairs to people in need at each site.
Many of the recipients — including those with disabilities, patients being treated for leprosy and tuberculosis, and victims of the persecution’s violence — were either prevented from obtaining medical treatment or could not afford to purchase a wheelchair. The Knights’ donation, said Bishop Mamza, was life-altering.
“The worst affected are those from the rural areas,” he said. “Apart from the Church, there is no other way of support. … By providing these wheelchairs, the Knight of Columbus has made those physically challenged people feel that they can also add value to the society and also to the Church.”
One recipient, Solomon Luka, had to be carried by family or crawl to get from one place to another. “I feel so happy,” he said after receiving the wheelchair. “There are so many things I can do which I couldn’t before.”
The Nigerian bishops, the catechists and the wheelchair recipients all express gratitude for the Order’s efforts, which reminds them that they are not alone.
“It is a great sign of the universality of humanity,” said Bishop Donatus Edet Akpan of Ogoja. “When there is a need for help, you don’t consider nationality, or whether you are white or black. Love is meant for all.”
Adeojo and Fathers Ferdinand and Sunday — the three catechist cohort members currently in Steubenville — gather for Mass every day, keeping the intentions of the Knights of Columbus in their prayers. They don’t know the next time they will be back home, a fact especially hard for Adeojo, whose wife and two children remain in Nigeria. But the sacrifice is worth it, he said — even though he and his confreres acknowledge that their catechetical training could ultimately lead to their deaths.
“Christ is the only reason we need,” said Adeojo. “He was persecuted and he died, but he rose. We believe that whoever sacrifices his life could cause many to convert back to Christ. So, like St. Paul, if we die, we die in Christ.”