31 missionaries killed.

In 1999, 31 Catholic missionaries were killed, including four of Mother Teresa's Missionary Sisters of Charity (three in Sierra Leone and one in Guinea-Conarky) according to the missionary news agency Fides. This compares to 36 journalists killed worldwide in the course of duty in 1999, double the number of 1998.

Of the 31 Catholic "missionaries," 17 were priests (10 diocesan, seven religious); eight women religious; four seminarians; and two lay catechists. The term "missionary" includes those native to a country.

Fifteen died in Africa, 10 in Asia, and six in Latin America. The countries where the most missionaries have died are East Timor (9), Angola (6), and Colombia (4).

The total number of lay Catholics murdered in 1999 is vastly greater than the 31 missionaries; it numbers in the thousands (think of East Timor and the Sudan), but because church agencies can't obtain accurate accounts of them, their numbers are not given.

The new year

The year 2000 started off with the murder of Brother Yosef Jami, 29, a Divine Word seminarian in Ende, Indonesia, on the afternoon of January 1. He was attacked and beaten to death by Islamic militants while walking on the beach.

On January 3, the body of 60-year-old Sister Antoinette Zaidan, a Maronite nun, was discovered on the grounds of Beirut University in Lebanon. She had been raped and strangled by Islamic militants who on the same day murdered two Catholic women in Northern Lebanon. One of the women was pregnant and was found hacked to pieces (Zen it, Jan. 7, 12, 2000).

In Egypt the first three days of January saw three days of Muslim attacks on Coptic Christians, started when a Muslim street vendor tried to purchase some textiles on credit from a Coptic shop owner. When he was refused, he and his brothers started a riot. All twenty people killed were Christians. Thirty-three were wounded.

Other persecutions

In Indonesia, throughout December 1999 and January 2000 it has been open warfare between Muslims and Christians in the Molucca islands. Although 85-90 per cent of the 210-million population is Muslim, Islam is not the state religion. Indonesia also recognizes Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

But wherever Christians form substantial minorities, such as in the spice islands (in Ambon, Christians are mostly Protestant with some Catholics) they become a target. This is so especially because the Indonesian government has been promoting a massive resettlement of Islamic settlers from densely populated Java into the archipelago. This has destabilized the economy and the religious accommodation established earlier. The latest estimate of those killed in the Moluccas over the last few months, Christians and Muslims, is 15,000 (fifteen thousand!), with hundreds more dying each week (Globe, Zenit, Jan 6, 2000).

The army has lost control; in Jakarta demonstrators call for a Jihad, i.e., a holy war against the Christians; and in Rome Pope John Paul II pleads for prayers and an end to the violence and the recognition of all parties that they belong to the same human family. On January 16 the Indonesian Council of Ulamas (religious leaders) said it supported the call for a Jihad, although President Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim who advocates religious tolerance, angrily rejected it (Globe, Jan 18).

One day later, more attacks on Christian churches--Protestant and Catholic--and on ethnic Chinese, took place in Lombok, an island west of Java and Bali. Eleven churches were burned and thousands of Christians attempted to flee to Bali (Reuters--AP, Jan 20).

Reports of violence arrive daily, including that by Muslim tribes and nations rebelling against the Javanese central government in Jakarta, such as in Aceh (northern Sumatra), Sulawesi, and Eastern New Guinea, renamed Irian Jaya. Indonesia had 17,000 islands.

In Nigeria, a third northern state has introduced a strict following of the Sharia, or Islamic law, as of January 27, 2000. It involves such penalties as amputations for theft, public flogging for drinking alcohol, and separate buses for men and women. The latter are reduced to an inferior status. Above all, Sharia discriminates against all nonMuslims.

Authorities claim that the law will only apply to Muslims and "consenting" Christians, but the minority Christian communities know better. They fear that inter-tribal relations will be poisoned by the measure.

In Saudi Arabia, a Filipino Catholic employed for 14 years as an engineer has been detained by the religious police since December 1, without explanation. His house and office were searched and a bible was confiscated. Apparently his name was found on a computer disk confiscated on earlier raids of two private religious services at which 267 Philippinos were arrested. The 13 men identified as their leaders have been deported.

Christian religious services are absolutely forbidden in Saudi Arabia, even private ones. The country employs 400,000 Philippinos--almost all of them Catholic--who are attracted by the higher wages and salaries offered them than those at home.

Rich with oil money, Saudi Arabia finances the building of mosques and Muslim community centres throughout Western Europe and North and South America, making use of the prevailing constitutional freedom of religion in these countries to its fullest extent, without responding in kind. Muslims see Christianity as a weak and dying religion in a decadent Western culture.