Weekly Bulletin on the Persecution
of Christians Worldwid

12 May 2026

The Universal Christian Church of the New Jerusalem continues her mission to expose and condemn the ongoing persecution of Christians, documenting recent reports of violence against them across Africa and Asia. Six nations, one shared agony: amidst a prevailing global silence, the blood of the faithful in Christ continues to be shed.

Kenya

During this month, in the Nguni area of Mwingi County, Somali gunmen moving along grazing routes near local farmland, opened fire on civilians, killing a fourteen-year-old Christian, James Mutemi.

Mozambique

On 2 May, militants affiliated with the Islamic State in Mozambique unleashed a new series of attacks on Christian communities in Ancuabe district, Cabo Delgado province. In the village of Macaiamo, a Christian man was killed; the terrorists labelled him a “Christian fighter”, a term the Islamic State uses to describe Christians who refuse to convert to Islam. Also on 2 May, fifty homes and a place of worship were set ablaze in the village of Miegane. Two days prior, in the village of Ncoe, a house and another church were destroyed.

Congo

On 5 May, terrorists from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic State affiliate, struck the Christian villages of Katerrain and Mangambo on the border between North Kivu and Ituri provinces, killing at least twenty-four people. The following night, further raids on the villages of Ikaya and Ndalya triggered a mass exodus of the population. According to eyewitness accounts, the ADF now has a permanent presence in several villages along the Samboko River between Beni and Irumu, where they enforce Quranic studies, mandatory conversion to Islam, and the death penalty on those who refuse.

Nigeria

On the evening of 3 May, Fulani jihadist militants raided the Christian village of Fan in Barkin Ladi County, Plateau State, killing five faithfuls after being ambushed while returning home from work. This attack was one of three carried out in the same county over a two-week period, resulting in eleven Christian deaths and five injuries. All of the Fan village’s residents are Christian.

Pakistan

Shabbir Masih, a thirty-three-year-old Christian sanitation worker, died after being overcome by toxic gases at the bottom of an eight-meter-deep sewer. He had been forced into the manhole by his superiors despite having refused the task for three consecutive days due to safety concerns. Shabbir’s death is not an isolated incident: between 2011 and 2023, at least forty other Pakistani Christians have perished under identical circumstances. In Pakistan, Christians are systematically relegated to the most hazardous and degrading jobs, enduring a form of social servitude that often ends in tragedy.

China

On 7 May, the Hefei Intermediate Court in Anhui Province rejected the appeals of Pastors Zhou Songlin and Ding Zhongfu of the Ganquan Church, upholding their original sentences: four years and six months for Zhou Songlin, and four years for Ding Zhongfu. The two ministers, both in their sixties, were arrested in November 2023 during a sweeping crackdown on their unregistered house church. They were convicted of “fraud,” as the court reclassified the voluntary offerings of the faithful as illegal income. The tribunal also ordered the seizure of all community assets and bank accounts — a new legal tactic employed by Beijing to criminalise the free exercise of faith and dismantle Chinese house churches.

This Church entrusts to Mary – the Universal Coredemptrix – and embraces with immense love, the families of little James Mutemi and Shabbir Masih, the survivors from the villages of Macaiamo, Miegane, Katerrain, Mangambo, and Fan, the Chinese pastors imprisoned in Hefei, and all those who have shed their blood during these days because of their love for Christ. Divine justice awaits all their executioners.

“Can anything ever separate us from the love of Christ?
Can hardships, or distress, or persecution,
or lack of clothes and food, or danger, or threatened death?
No; we come through all these things as more than conquerors,
by the power of him who loved us”
(Rm 8: 35.37)