Church leaders in Cameroon and Nigeria reiterate faith and resolve despite attacks

Evangelizing in politically and culturally volatile places sometimes comes at a high cost. Bishops, priests, pastoral workers, and missionaries in Africa and elsewhere have frequently been targets for attacks: many have been kidnapped, and others have been killed.

According to the latest annual report by the Vatican’s Fides News Agency on missionaries and pastoral workers killed in the last year, 17 deaths were recorded across the globe, with the African continent and Nigeria especially the most affected.

Ten of the 17 priests and pastoral agents killed last year were from Africa, and Nigeria accounted for half of Africa’s deaths. Two missionaries died in Burkina Faso, one in Sierra Leone, one in Sudan, and one in Kenya.

2025 marked an increase in deaths compared to 2024, when 14 missionaries were killed. From 2000 to 2025, Fides has documented the deaths of 626 missionaries or pastoral workers.

Kidnappings and deaths in Cameroon

Although no priests in Cameroon were murdered last year, several priests and pastoral workers were either kidnapped or lost their lives in Cameroon on the line of duty, particularly in the country’s English-speaking regions, where a separatist uprising has been festering for about a decade.

On November 15, 2025, Fr. John Berinyuy Tatah, the parish priest of Babessi, and his assistant were kidnapped by separatist fighters as they returned from the Mass inaugurating the PAX University Institute in Ndop.

Three days later, on November 18th, four priests and one layperson went to negotiate with the gunmen for the release of the two priests, but were also taken captive.

All the kidnapped priests and lay Catholics were released, but they endured “days of pain,” to quote the archbishop of Bamenda, Andrew Nkea Fuanya.

“The frequent kidnapping of our priests and mission personnel has pushed us to the wall, and we say that this should stop with immediate effect,” he added, noting that many lay Christians have also been tortured or killed.

On Wednesday, November 21, 2018, Fr. Cosmas Omboto Ondari, a Mill Hill Kenyan missionary based in the Mamfe Diocese in Cameroon’s troubled Southwest Region, was shot in front of St. Martin of Tours Parish in Kembong, Cameroon.

“Eye Witness accounts say that he was killed by Government Soldiers (Gendarmerie Nationale), who were shooting at random from their passing vehicle. A certain Mr Johnson Ndip Nchot was also shot in front of his house, a few meters from the Church building,” said Bishop Nkea, who at the time was the Bishop of Mamfe.

On October 7, 2025, Fr. Christophe Komla Badjougou, then the parish priest at the church of St Peter and Paul in Zouzoui in the Diocese of Yagoua, was shot dead in Yaoundé.

In March of the previous year, Fr. Olivier Ntsa Ebode was killed in an operation linked to the separatist crisis in the English-speaking regions.

And in 2019, armed men dressed in military gear attacked the St Elizabeth Catholic General Hospital, in Shisong, Kumbo, located in Cameroon’s troubled Northwest Region, where they tortured staff and ransacked the wards. They threatened the Sisters on duty and promised to burn down the entire hospital when they returned.

However, the attacks on priests and others have not dampened their commitment to continue serving God’s people.

The Local Ordinary of Kumbo Diocese, Mgr. George Nkuo, told CWR that despite such attacks, he would never abandon the “suffering, miserable, and dying people.”

Nkuo treks to remote areas, sometimes on motorbikes, risking his life on a daily basis to reach the people.

He expressed gratitude to the priests and religious who have “stayed with the people amid the violence,” and noted that such witness “has been overwhelming.”

“This crisis will be over, and I see great resilience among the people,” he said. “When it comes to an end, I am confident that the people will rebuild their broken lives,” he said.

The retired Archbishop of Bamenda, Cornelius Fontem Esua, also in Cameroon’s troubled Northwest Region, told the story of how he was forced to spend 24 hours in separatist captivity.

The prelate said he had gone on a pastoral visit to St. Therese Parish in Esu in the Momo Division of the North West Region of Cameroon to preach peace in a region wracked by conflict. Upon his return, he was taken by gun-toting youths.

“The boys [separatist fighters] came, about 5 or 6 of them, very aggressively shouting, ‘Who do you think you are?’ They mishandled my driver,” the archbishop recounted. They took the retired archbishop to their forest camp, where he spent the night.

“I am grateful for that opportunity,” Archbishop Esua told CWR, “because it offered me the opportunity to evangelize. I told them that whatever their complaints were, they could never be resolved through violence.”

“They asked me to pray for them,” he recounted. “I prayed for them and gave them copies of the Holy Bible and rosaries.”

The peculiar case of Nigeria

As highlighted in the Fides Agency report, the toll on Nigeria’s shepherds is staggering. In a single year, five priests and pastoral workers were murdered, a devastating figure that represents almost a third of all clergy killed worldwide.

“This is not a new crisis but a relentless campaign of terror, and one that targets Christians,” said Emeka Umeagbalasi, the Director of the Nigerian human rights organization, International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety.

Official Catholic records from the Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria confirm the murder of at least 12 priests since 2015, a number that seems low when compared to the findings Intersociety, which documents the deaths of at least 20 clergymen in just five years. These individual tragedies form part of a catastrophic mosaic of faith-based persecution, one where over 125,000 Christians have lost their lives since 2009 in Nigeria.

Fr. Patrick Alumuku, the spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Abuja, said in an interview on Arise Television that, contrary to narratives that priests are caught in the crossfire of economic and ethnic interests, religion is the overarching motive for attacks on priests and pastoral agents in Nigeria.

“I think that what actually has happened is that nobody is telling the truth about the problem in Benue and the Middle Belt,’ he said.

He explained that what’s going on in Nigeria is a jihad—a deliberate targeting of Christians and Christian leaders for their faith.

The attacks are carried out by an array of extremists, including Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram, ISIS, and others.

“Their jihad continues, with Benue as its epicenter. They are driven by a chilling conviction: that by overrunning Benue, they can finally fulfill their long-held ambition of reaching the ocean. It is a narrative that is dangerously ignored,” he said.

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