So how widespread is anti-Christian violence?
“Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that every year an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are killed because of some relation to their faith,” Vatican spokesman Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi announced in a radio address to the United Nations Human Rights Council in May….
Wow. What a stunning figure. At least 100,000 martyrs a year. That’s overwhelming. We complacent Christians in the Global North generally have no clue how bad things are elsewhere in the world.
David Handy+
The 100K figure comes from the Vatican and from Gordon-Conwell Seminary and the BBC news article says it includes those killed in eastern Congo and in the past included the victims of the Rwanda genocide. These account for about 9/10 of the total. But even figuring only those killed clearly because of their Christian faith at 10K a year – that’s a lot of saints. I plan to make reference to that figure in a sermon Sunday.