In June, Pope Francis released his first independent encyclical. It merely served to highlight the indifference to the plight of persecuted Christians around the world.The Pope warned about issues dealing with the environment, but he did not once mention the plight of persecuted Christians -- even though he is well acquainted with it, and even though previous popes mentioned it when Christians were experiencing far less persecution than they are today.
Encyclicals are formal treatises written by popes and sent to bishops around the world. In turn, bishops are meant to disseminate the encyclical's ideas to all the priests and churches in their jurisdiction, so that the pope's thoughts might reach every church-attending Catholic.
If the plight of persecuted Christians had been mentioned in the encyclical, bishops and the congregations under their care would be required to acknowledge it. Perhaps a weekly prayer for the persecuted could be institutionalized, keeping the plight of those Christians in the spotlight so that Western Catholics and others would remember them, talk about them, and, perhaps most importantly, ask why they are being persecuted. Once enough people were familiar with Christian persecution, they could influence U.S. policymakers -- for starters, to drop those policies that directly exacerbate the sufferings of Christian minorities in the Middle East.
Instead, Pope Francis apparently deemed it more important to issue a proclamation addressing the environment and climate change. Whatever position one holds concerning these topics, it is telling that the pope -- the one man in the world best placed and most expected to speak up for millions of persecuted Christians around the world -- is more interested in speaking up for a "safe" (politically correct, if scientifically questionable) subject, "the world" itself, rather than the pressing bloodbath in front of him, or a topic requiring real leadership from a Christian authority.
Meanwhile, Christians around the world and the Muslim world especially continue to be persecuted and slaughtered. In one little-reported story, the Islamic State burned an 80 year-old Christian woman to death in a village southeast of Mosul. The elderly woman was reportedly burned alive for refusing to comply with Islamic law.
In east Jerusalem, a group calling itself the "Islamic State in Palestine" distributed fliers threatening to massacre all Christians who failed to evacuate the Holy City. The leaflets, which appeared on June 27, said that the Islamic State knows where the city's Christians live, and warned that they have until Eid al-Fitr -- July 19, the end of Ramadan -- to leave the city or be slaughtered. The leaflet was emblazoned with the Islamic State's black flag.
In Egypt, after a foiled suicide attack on the ancient temples of Karnak in Luxor (a tourist destination), the Islamic State promised a "fiery summer" for Egypt's Christian Copts. Abu Zayid al-Sudani, a leading member of the Islamic State, tweeted: "The bombing of Luxor, a burning summer awaits the tyrant of Egypt [President Sisi] and his soldiers, and the worshippers of the cross. This is just the beginning."
The rest of June's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following accounts, listed by theme.
Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches and Cemeteries
Turkey: On June 9, a Muslim man attacked a church in the Kadıköy district of Istanbul with a Molotov cocktail, setting the building's door on fire. In a video of the attack, the man is seen shouting "Allahu Akbar" ["Allah is Greater!"] and "Revenge will be taken for Al-Aqsa Mosque" as he throws a firebomb at the Hagia Triada Orthodox Church. The man was eventually detained by police.
Egypt: A bomb was placed alongside the Virgin Mary Coptic Christian Church in Helwan, part of Greater Cairo, but the security services managed to dismantle it before it exploded.
France: On June 7, two Muslim men were arrested by French authorities in connection to a thwarted terror plot to attack a church near Paris last April. Authorities said they had detained Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a computer science student, who had planned an attack on churches in Villejuif, south of Paris, and is suspected in the killing of a woman nearby. Documents in Arabic mentioning al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were found during a search of Ghlam's home. Several military weapons, handguns, ammunition, bulletproof vests and computer and telephone hardware were also found in Ghlam's home and car.
Zanzibar: Muslims on the majority-Muslim island harassed and persecuted two churches:
1) They drove Pastor Philemon, a father of five, into hiding and took over his New Covenant Church's worship hall by getting the landlord to rent it to them before the church's lease ended. Once a congregation of 100, members now number 25. "The church faithful are so scattered," said Philemon. "Some members are always knocking at my door requesting a place for worship." The pastor is also helping care for several converts from Islam who fled their homes after persecution, and he is struggling financially to help them while also providing for his own family, which includes five children.
2) Just outside Zanzibar City, in Chukwani, Muslims made false land claims to bleed dry a church with legal costs. Said Pastor Lukanula: "The Muslims are waiting for the time when we shall fail to attend the court hearing, implying losing the case and subsequently having to pay a substantial amount of money." Before the false claims were made, regarding ownership of the land, the leader of a local mosque told the pastor, "We do not want to see a church building here in Chukwani." In 2007, Muslims in the area had demolished the original structure under construction.
Iraq: The Islamic State posted notices around the captured city of Mosul announcing that the Syriac Orthodox Cathedral Church of St. Ephrem, seized a year ago, was to be become the "mosque of the mujahedeen," or "jihadis." The new name was announced on the anniversary of the date the church had been seized. The Islamic flag stating the shehada ("there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger") was draped over the building. "If they changed a church to a mosque it is further proof of their cleansing," said the president of A Demand for Action, a group advocating the protection of minorities in the Middle East. "They destroy our artefacts, our churches and try to erase us in any way they can."
