Opinion

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: The war on Christians is real and the world can no longer stay silent

From Nigeria to North Korea, tens of thousands of Christians are killed annually, yet the crisis remains largely ignored

By Bishop Robert Barron Fox News

Published April 14, 2026 10:00am EDT

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Christianity is, by an order of magnitude, the most persecuted religion in the world. Between 360,000,000 and 380,000,000 Christians face high degrees of hostility. Conservative estimates are that tens of thousands of Christians are killed annually for their faith, especially in places such as Nigeria, Burkina Faso, North Korea and China. But the murder, torture and imprisonment are taking place across the globe. 

In many Western countries, a less lethal but still severe form of persecution is visited upon Christians by ideological secularists, who see Christianity as their principal intellectual and cultural opponent. In many ways, contemporary attacks on the faithful are a continuation of the anti-Christian violence of the 20th century, which produced more Christian martyrs than all previous centuries combined. However, the source of the animosity has shifted considerably. Whereas in the last century, hostility to Christianity came largely from depraved totalitarianism, largely secularist and materialist in orientation, today’s opposition comes, to a considerable degree, from militant forms of Islam in the Middle East, in Asia, but especially in Africa.

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Why should Christianity in particular be the object of such opprobrium and violent opposition?........

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