“We will use every legitimate means to ensure their quick and safe release,” he said.
At least seven Catholic priests have been kidnapped in Nigeria in the month of July, according to data compiled by Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic nonprofit organization.
The latest abduction brings the total up to 20 Nigerian priests kidnapped since the beginning of 2022. Three of the priests were killed.
Security expert David Otto, director of the Geneva Centre for Africa Security and Strategic Studies, based in Geneva, Switzerland, told CNA that the consensus of security experts in his group is that the Catholic Church is being targeted because it has been paying the steep ransoms demanded by the bandits, which can be as high as $200,000 or more.
Bishop Jude Arogundade of Ondo, in southwestern Nigeria, where still-unapprehended gunmen on June 4 killed at least 40 people attending a Pentecost Mass in Owo, believes that the Catholic Church in Nigeria is both a threat and a strategic target for radicalized Muslim Fulani herdsmen and Islamic terror groups using violence to destabilize Nigeria.
Nigeria’s Kaduna state, in particular, has been described as “an epicenter of kidnapping and violence by non-state actors” in Nigeria by the UK-based human rights foundation Christian Solidarity Worldwide. A 2022 report by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom cites six attacks against churches in Kaduna State in 2021.
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