Twenty Catholic missionaries were killed across the world through violent death in 2023, with Africa recording the highest number of victims, according to Vatican Fides News Agency. 

The information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies reported on Saturday that these include: one bishop, eight priests, two men religious, one seminarian, one novice and seven laypeople were killed.

Africa leading the list

As in previous years, the majority of the murdered Church workers were in Africa. According to Vatican reports, the dead include two priests, a seminarian and a Benedectine novice, who were killed in Nigeria. Among the victims was Father Isaac Achi, a 61-year-old priest who was burned alive during an attack by an armed group in his parish in the diocese of Minna, central Nigeria.

The other victims are two missionaries who were murdered in Burkina Faso; one priest was killed in an attack in his parish in Tanzania; a religious brother and a parish priest were stabbed in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), respectively.

Six missionaries killed in Mexico and the United States 

Mexico again endured the bulk of missionary murders in the Americas this year, with two priests and two young catechists killed in the country. 

Two brutal missionary murders were also reported in the United States, where Bishop David O'Connell, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, was killed by the husband of his housekeeper, who confessed the crime, and in mid-December, Fr. Stephen Gutgsell, a priest at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, died after being stabbed in the rectory of the Church.

Killings in the Philippines and Gaza

In Asia, four Catholic lay people were murdered in 2023. Two Filipino Catholic students were among the victims of the recent bombing attack during a Mass at Mindanao State University in Marawi City, which killed four people and wounded several others. Junrey Barbante and Janine Arenas were volunteers from the university chaplaincy community, where they were involved in liturgical animation.

In war-hit Gaza, Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar Kamal Anton, two active parishioners of the Holy Family Catholic Parish Church, were killed by snipers on December 16 as they were walking to the adjacent Convent of the Sisters of Mother Theresa. They both belonged to a group of Catholic and Orthodox women working for the poor and disabled in the Strip.

Another layperson was also killed in Spain earlier this year. Diego Valencia, sacristan of the parish of Nuestra Senora de La Palma, in Algeciras, in the province of Cadiz, was stabbed in January by a young Moroccan armed with a machete, who also injured other people.