I’m in Washington, D.C., again.
I was here last week for the International Religious Freedom Summit with Nigerians from Plateau and Benue, including my friend Rev. Ilhuya Remigius and his Bishop, his excellency, Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, CMF.
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I’m back this week for markup at the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee for Rep. Chris Smith’s H. Res. 82 for Nigeria, tomorrow. (https://foreignaffairs.house.
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Wednesday/Thursday I’ll attend the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, again with the good Bishop and Fr. Remigius present.
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I’m working on a plan to bring them to my diocese to speak.
You may recall some 160+ souls were slaughtered in Plateau on Christmas Eve. The dead include a minister’s wife and six children. The terrorists torched the house after locking them all inside. Only teeth and bits of bone were found in the ashes.
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Most don’t know the slaughter continues more than six weeks later with two priests taken hostage last Friday and a Protestant pastor murdered. Others—nameless others—were likewise killed and maimed.
Unarmed victims and many youth trying to scout perimeters and defend their villages have been harassed and detained by state security.
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The perpetrators run free, pull back, regroup and attack again. No one stops them. Those who should, don’t.In truth, what happened in Israel on October 7 is a daily occurrence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. Militant Islamists attack sleeping farming communities. The farmers are being killed and their families, if they survive, are forced off their lands.
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Over 5,000 were killed last year in attacks such as these. Many have been taken captive—no one cries for their release. Between 4-6 million are internally displaced. I’ve been there. I’ve seen them. I’ve held the babies with distended bellies starved and thirsty.
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In Nigeria, those attacked are impoverished, living in mud huts and cinderblock construction houses with tin roofs. Eighty percent of those impacted in the Middle Belt are Catholic.
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According to a Pew report last year, Nigeria has the highest rate of Mass attendance in the world with 95+% of those who profess to be Catholic attending Sunday Mass and 76% attending at least once during the week. And, having been there, I can tell you that Nigerians show up to Mass dressed in their very best clothes and finery. They know they are going before the King of kings and Lord of lords.
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In the midst of all of this, I have been reading your book, “Future Events,” and watching season 9 of “The Curse of Oak Island,” where the treasure seekers seem to be closing in on something big which some say may even be the Ark of the Covenant and the Chalice of the Last Super. (Rumor? Hype? Or, all part of God’s great plan?)
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In your book, I have been reading about the Fatima “Enlightenment.”
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I read about the Angel and the unhatching of the axis of the earth and what could cause such an event.
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At the same time, I have to say, I rarely hear the word, “hatch,” anymore. It’s not common presently.
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Unless you’ve been watching the Oak Island show.
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It’s a stretch—a long one—but references the “the hole under the hatch” have been very big in season 9 (2022) and maybe moreover in the current season. I’m just not caught up yet.
Just thought I’d throw this your way.
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PS: The persecution of Christians is very real, and increasing immeasurably. Nagorno-Karabakh, a Christian Armenian community dating back to the fourth century has fallen to genocidal Azerbaijan without a peep. The whole of Armenia is next.
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When Save the Persecuted Christians was established in 2018 there were a conservative 215 million heavily persecuted Christians worldwide according to the Workd Watch List of Open Doirs and half a billion in the world lived under constant threat because of their beliefs a cording to Aid to the Church in Need. In 2022, the numbers are now a staggering 360+ million—a 67% increase—in a short few years.
Maranatha!
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Dede
Dede Laugesen