Pontifical charity plays down event; Hungarian government helps
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The ongoing attacks on Christians goes largely ignored in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), despite the recent horrific discovery of more than 70 dead bodies inside a Church in the eastern part of the country.
This latest brutal attack has left families and friends of the victims, as well as worldwide believers, reeling.
 "We don't know what to do or how to pray; we've had enough of massacres," said an elder in a nearby church.
Open Doors, a non-profit supporting persecuted Christians around the world, with sources on the ground in DRC, reported that the violence began at about 4 a.m. on Thursday, February 13, 2025 when militants captured some 20 Christians in the village of Maiba. The militants are suspected to be members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist terrorist group from Uganda taking hold in DRC.
"[M]ilitants went door by door saying, 'Get out, get out and don't make any noise,'" an elder in a nearby town told one source. "Twenty Christian men and women came out, and they tied them up for an unknown destination."Â
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After the 20 were taken, militants surrounded the predominantly Christian village and abducted about 50 more people.
Some 70 captives – men, women, children and the elderly – were taken to a local Protestant church in the nearby village of Kasanga, where they were beheaded with machetes or hammered to death. The corpses were discovered the next day.
According to an on-the-ground source, days after the attack, families of the victims had still not been able to bury their dead because of the threat of danger and death in the region. Many Christians have fled the area to somewhere deemed safer.Â
This latest attack by the ADF represents the worst that has been reported in a year and a half in eastern DRC territory.
According to Open Doors, in addition to the daily threat of abduction and death, thousands of Christians have been displaced multiple times; their houses have been looted and burned down; and churches, schools and health facilities have been forced to close.
With the suppression of ISIS in the Middle East, the scene of bloody persecution of Christians has shifted to Africa, with one source alleging that "at least 4,500 Christians [were] killed on the continent last year." Other reports set the number much higher, with one stating no fewer than 4,000 Christians were killed in 2023 in Nigeria alone.
SPLITTING HAIRS?
Despite the butchery and abductions, some are unwilling to describe the state of affairs as "persecution."
The director of the International Press and Media Department for Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a pontifical charity, advises against "oversimplifying" what happened.
According to an article published by Crux, Maria Lozano is quoted as saying, "We cannot speak of persecution across the entire country, as most of the violence occurring in the DRC has no religious connection. It is important to be cautious and avoid oversimplifying or misleading people in our analysis."
She explained to the Catholic media outlet that the murder of the 70 Christians likely resulted from "a mixed [sic] of reasons":
"One of them is that these victims were unable to resist or endure the forced march. When the rebels take hostages, they force them to travel with them, either as reinforcements for their group or as forced labor for their war effort. When there's loot, they need people to carry it. If you get tired on the way, you're done. I believe that's what happened to these 70 people. The church was the best place to get rid of them."
Crux further quoted her as saying that just because "people were killed in a church doesn't necessarily mean they were targeted in anti-Christian pogroms."
Much of the conflict is over "competition of resources," she claims.
Others are less hesitant to frame the situation as a direct attack on Christian people. Global Jewish leader, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein of South Africa, says the persecution of Christians in DRC, as is the case across Africa, is real, and calls for action. He posted:
"The recent beheadings of 70 Christians in a church in the DRC is not an isolated incident. There is a continent wide war being waged by Jihadists against Christians in Africa. Each year, thousands of Christians are murdered, raped, kidnapped and beheaded for their faith, burned inside in their churches across the continent."
"The world must act now to stop this brutality," he urged.
HUNGARY HELPS
While some may be playing semantics, the small, majority Christian country of Hungary is offering on-the-ground assistance to the surviving victims of the latest Congolese attack.
The government-sponsored Hungary Helps program – a first of its kind in the world – has donated five million forints (about $13,000) to help the orphans and surviving victims of the terrorist attack. It is being assisted by the Reformed Church of Hungary.
Tristan Azbej, State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and the Hungary Helps Program, said he feels that "after the tragic attack, we have a duty to express our solidarity" and to "provide for orphans and families left without bread."
Hungary Helps' recent donation to the Congolese people is not its first. It has provided ongoing support to Hungarian ophthalmologist, Richárd Hardi, who has worked in the poorest parts of the DRC for 25 years, restoring the sight to tens of thousands of Congolese. Hardi is a member of the Community of the Beatitudes, an international Catholic community with "a desire to follow the path of Christ."
Hungary Helps also supports vocational training centers in DRC, helping the Congolese build their country sustainably and remain in it to mitigate the chaotic migration crisis.
Azbej says it's in the interest of all concerned to "reduce conflicts, and allow the Congolese people to create their future in their own country."
"Actions and deeds, not words" are "the guiding principles which define Hungary's humanitarian and developmental role," Azbej believes. "[W]e have a responsibility regarding the innocent suffering in developing countries and crisis areas," he insists.
"We stand in universal solidarity with all people, but as a millennial Christian nation, we are particularly concerned about helping persecuted Christians around the world," the state secretary says.
WHAT WE CAN DO
To be fair, one legacy media outlet did report on the event. On Feb. 20, just days after the incidence, Newsweek published an article titled "70 Christians Beheaded in Church: What We know" providing the key details of the story.
Ironically, it also included X posts from pro-lifer Lila Rose and the Libs of TikTok calling out MSM's failure to cover the story.
Granted, there may be just so much media space to cover the horrific events happening in the the world. But certainly the vast numbers of beheadings, abductions and other violent assaults by Islamic extremists – targeting Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, and ordinary Christians not only in DRC, but in Africa overall, and now thanks to unfettered migration of people hostile to Christianity to western countries – warrant more attention.
We may feel stumped by what we can do in the face of unspeakable horrors in sub-Saharan Africa (and close to home) and the dearth of news publicizing it, however, there are things we can do.
We can publicize news of these events on our own digital platforms and share articles like this one on social media.
We can learn more about how to become involved in and make donations to credible charitable organizations like Hungary Helps and Open Doors.
We can also – even at this very moment – pray. We can pray for the repose of the souls of the 70 massacred Christians in Kasanga and for their surviving family and friends.
We can, as Open Doors recommends, "pray for the ADF, that the Lord will bring them to repentance and into relationship with Him. If they harden their hearts towards God, pray that He will confuse their plans."Â
We can also ask God to soften the hardness of our own hearts. As is stated in Ephesians: "They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart."
Dr. Barbara Toth has a doctorate in rhetoric and composition from Bowling Green State University. She has taught high school in Poland and Oman and at universities in the US, China and Saudi Arabia. Her work in setting up a writing center at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahmen University, an all-women's university in Riyadh, has been cited in American journals. Toth has published academic and non-academic articles and poems internationally.
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