World in Brief

A 23-year-old Muslim woman from Wakawaka village, eastern Uganda who converted to Christianity at a church service was poisoned to death the same night.

Returning from the service, Namata Habiiba told her Muslim stepmother, Namu Sauya, that she had put her faith in Christ. Sauya prepared and served food for them and then left the room. Within minutes, Habiiba started complaining of severe stomach pain and began to vomit, the friend said. She was rushed to hospital but soon died. A postmortem determined the cause as ingesting rat poison.

Iranian church leader Youcef Nadarkhani has been released from prison under a national amnesty issued by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to commemorate the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Pastor Nadarkhani was first arrested in 2016 during a series of raids by security agents on Christian homes. In 2021, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stated that the pastor’s continued detention was arbitrary. CSW said: ‘We welcome the long-overdue release of Pastor Nadarkhani, although he has spent years in prison on false charges as a result of Iran’s continuing criminalisation of Christianity’.

The Baptist Evangelical Church of Veneux-les-Sablons, south of Paris, has suffered a serious break-in.

Thieves gained access by smashing a window. They tried to break into the worship room but could not open the door. They took money from the bookshop till and cheques were found lying in the corridors. They also tried to break into the collection box but did not succeed in opening it. Officers from the French national police visited the scene and traces of blood were found, but church pastor, Sylvain Felden, said they did not come back to take samples.

Plans to burn several church buildings in central India were thwarted after police arrested three Hindu extremists – but not before they had set one structure ablaze.

Pastor Mahesh Kumre of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chaukipura village, Madhya Pradesh, said he found the building burned out when he arrived for Sunday worship. ‘The walls were blackened with the smoke from the fire, the electrical switchboard burnt, and the name “Ram” written on one of the inside walls of the church in Hindi.’

The state of New York has agreed to pay $250,000 to the Christian adoption agency it tried to shut down for its beliefs.

The settlement, enforced by the US Court of Appeals and a federal district court, ensures that New Hope Family Services (NHFS) can no longer be targeted for its faith-based policies by the New York Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). OCFS officials attempted to close down NHFS for its policy of placing children only with married, heterosexual couples.

Christians in the Chinese province of Henan now have to register on a government app in order to attend worship services.

The local Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission’s ‘Smart Religion’ app makes it compulsory for all believers to make online reservations before they can attend religious services. The app requires personal information, including name, government ID number, phone number and address before reservations can be made to worship. Elderly people may find the technology difficult, so they may miss out on attending services.

Portugal’s Roman Catholic Church has taken some steps to tackle child sexual abuse within the Church – but said suspected priests still in active roles would not be suspended unless the facts against them were clearly established. The Church also said that it would not compensate victims.

A recent report revealed that 4,815 children have been sexually abused by members of the Church over the past 70 years. Those findings were the ‘tip of the iceberg’, and more than 100 suspected abusive priests remained active in Church roles.

A parliamentary committee has called for Canada’s assisted suicide programme to be extended, such that ‘mature minors’ whose deaths are ‘reasonably foreseeable’ may be allowed to hasten their deaths without parental consent.

The Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying recommended that minors should be eligible for doctor-assisted suicide. Minors ‘deemed to have the requisite decision-making capacity upon assessment’ should be eligible for the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying programme, it said.

Six Egyptian Christians kidnapped for ransom earlier this month by a criminal gang in western Libya have been released, Egypt’s foreign ministry has said.

The men from the southern city of Sohag had travelled to Tripoli for work and were kidnapped on their way from the airport. Their Libyan driver was released immediately. Many Coptic Christians go to Libya in search of work, despite knowing that they will face severe persecution, including death. The kidnappers had demanded ransoms of $3,100 per captive.

Popular pastor and writer Tim Keller is undergoing further immunotherapy after revealing more tumours have been discovered.

The influential theologian has been experiencing stage four pancreatic cancer for nearly three years. Keller asks Christians to pray for him because the last round of immunotherapy was ‘fairly brutal,’ he says.

Authorities in south eastern Sudan have arrested a church leader for preaching to Muslims. Yousif Ayoub Hussein Ali was detained during an open-air worship event in Ad-Damazin.

He was accused of inciting religious hatred and preaching to Muslims, though there is no law in Sudan against proclaiming one’s faith. Local Muslims feared that his preaching would encourage their children to convert. The arrest violates religious rights and international treaties to which Sudan is a party.

A local village official in Rajabasa Jaya village, Sumatra, Indonesia halted a church service following a mob intrusion. Village head Wawan Kurniawan leapt over a metre-high fence to enter the Tabernacle of David Christian Church.

A video of the incident shows Wawan pushing away a pastor and church member who tell him they are in ‘a house of God’ and are only praying. Ten local residents then jumped over the fence and demanded the service be stopped. Someone from the mob then put the pastor’s throat in a stranglehold and told the congregation to leave.

Three people died and two were seriously injured during an attack by Fulani armed men on the Maiyanga community, while two men were killed at their farm in a separate attack in Mabel village. Both areas are in Plateau State.

The attackers arrived on motorcycles and began firing at people who were relaxing outside their homes. Although the security forces were alerted by villagers, they reportedly arrived after the militia had left.

More than 15,000 Christians from 70 denominations across India have demonstrated in the capital city, New Delhi, against the ongoing levels of persecution. The peaceful protests called on the government and the courts to intervene on behalf of persecuted Christians, particularly in those states that have passed ‘anti-conversion laws’.

In theory, these laws prohibit forced conversion from Hinduism to another religion, but in practice they are often used to harass and intimidate Christians, who may only be distributing aid or having a private church meeting.