Faith

Father Tobias Chukwujekwu Okonkwo of Nnewi, Nigeria was the final missionary to give his life for the spread of the Gospel in 2024.

Propagation of the Faith

Friday, January 10, 2025Faith

As is the custom, on December 26, the Feast of Saint Stephen, proto martyr of our faith, a report was released by Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies at the Vatican. The annual dossier chronicles the lives of missionaries and pastoral workers in the missions who've lost their lives to violence because of their ministries. The dispatch for 2024 reported that thirteen people -- eight priests and five lay people -- were killed because of their ecclesial activities.
The Americas and Africa were tied with six deaths each. In Africa, two took place in Burkina Faso, in a part of the country where anti-Christian violence has caused many to flee from it. Last February, fifty-five-year-old catechist Francois Kabore was leading a prayer service in his village which has no priest, when the church came under attack. Francois was shot and killed. His fellow catechist, Edouard Zoetyenga Yougbare, was kidnapped in April. Edouard's body was found with his hands tied behind his back with many signs of torture.
In the Americas, Father Marcelo Perez, an Indigenous Mexican, was killed after celebrating Mass in the Chiapas State of that country. He was known for his work helping victims of violence and had received numerous death threats, none of which stopped his work on behalf of the poor and marginalized. Juan Antonio Lopez, a Catholic human rights and environmental activist was killed in his car by a hitman after attending Mass in the Diocese of Trujillo, Honduras. A forty-six-year-old husband and father of two, he was the coordinator for pastoral care in the diocese.
The day after Fides issued the communique, there was an immediate need to amend it. On the evening of December 26, Father Tobias Chukwujekwu Okonkwo was shot and killed in the Diocese of Nnewi, Nigeria. Trained as a pharmacist, Father also was the administrator of the nursing and midwifery schools and the medical laboratory at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. The hospital's website recalls that it owes its foundation and success to "the early missionaries" who came bringing evangelization through healthcare and education. Father Tobias was carrying on their legacy in a way that would make all missionaries proud -- he was a local man who said "Yes!" to God's call to the priesthood. Every missionary dreams of putting themselves out of work by helping to form a self-sustaining local Church.
Please join us as we pray for the repose of these fourteen souls, begging God to bring peace to their families and our world in 2025.

- Maureen Crowley Heil is Director of Programs and Development for the Pontifical Mission Societies, Boston.