A Pontificate of Peace

"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