We are living through a turbulent reality that we don’t quite know where it will lead us. A struggle of forces seeking to change the geopolitical status quo in search of, without a doubt, economic and strategic interests. We haven’t evolved much. The bullies of the moment, on one side and the other, stand up as police and continue to create fear and insecurity in the classrooms of modernity. This is a “bullying” global and permanent. And many intolerable human realities are overshadowed by all of this that we are living.
Who cares to talk now about persecuted Christians with so many sensational headlines? And yet this reality is so bleeding that someone must say it out loud so that at least it is not forgotten. To forget so many Christian massacres as in the early days of the Church seems to me cruel and inhuman, enough is enough. Nearly four hundred million Christians suffer some form of persecution in the world right now. The Christian religion is the most persecuted of all. Just the one that speaks the most of love and forgiveness. “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (Jn 15:20)
**The countries where Christians are most persecuted today are Syria and Nigeria.** The example of these Christians who endure this terrible situation of persecution without renouncing their faith earns them martyr-like qualities. The increase in the persecution of Christians around the world is worsening by the moment, and I don’t see the Church, as a whole, raising its voice and strongly denouncing what is happening. Do today’s headlines prevent us from seeing the reality unfolding in these persecutor countries? I want to raise my humble voice before this growing drama.
**I know that the issues of Greenland, Gaza, and Ukraine are very compelling, but that doesn’t mean we can consign these brothers and sisters of ours, who are suffering so much and at the gates of martyrdom, to the dustbin of oblivion.** North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea… are places where Christians survive amid threats and deaths. Especially Nigeria is a place of maximum concern. **Nearly 4,000 Christians have been martyred recently!** This has not only caused deaths but also the displacement of entire communities in search of safer places. When we then raise our voices against immigrants in our country, we do not imagine the hells they have had to go through to make the decision to abandon their lands.
To despise immigrants is to support, at bottom, these situations of persecution and misery that they are experiencing. And they are just as children of God as we are!
**No one in the world, in these times we live in, should feel persecuted for their ideas, their faith, their lifestyle, their sexual orientation… it would be an immense step towards the true modernity we desire.** **That utopia, which is the gospel**, is in our hands and it is possible to make it a reality because the Holy Spirit blows where it wills and transforms hearts that allow themselves to be transformed. **Nothing is impossible for those who love.**
**Alejandro Fernández Barrajón**
Religion Digital
English version translated with AI