Burkina Faso welcomes foreign charities and NGOs, but they insist on importing a rigid form of the faith, as covert ‘Arabization’ threatens moderate Islam in Africa.
Pope Francis, joining the US, the European Union and the United Kingdom, has recognized the crimes of ISIS against Christians and other minorities as genocide. That designation should make Iraq’s suffering minorities eligible for substantial international support and protection as they are reclaiming land and properties held by ISIS for almost three years.
For security reasons the Pope had to cancel is trip to South Sudan, which had been slated for October. To show his support for the suffering people of the world’s newest nation he arranged for a grant of $500,000 in famine relief in South Sudan, the majority of whose citizens are Christians. Those refugees who end up in Sudan face a particular form of humiliation and hardship—Christian children are forced to recite Islamic prayers before receiving food.
When Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa on Sept. 4, 2017, he said that “she bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity.” A year later, a cathedral in Kosovo is consecrated to the saint.