SAN FRANCISCO, October 26, (THEWILL) – The Catholic Church has disclosed that 14 of its parishes in the Northeast were sacked by the rampaging Boko Haram insurgents with over 90,000 of the Church’s members displaced as a result of the over five-year-old crisis in the region.
Disclosing this in a statement on Sunday, the Director of Information, The Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri, Rev. Fr. Gideon Obasogie, also lamented the displacement of about 20 Catholic priests, saying some members are still searching for their loved ones both in the Maiduguri and Yola dioceses.
According to Obasogie, “A good number of those trapped around the Cameroonian borders are gradually finding their way into Maiduguri. Counting their ordeals, some will tell you how they fed on grasses and insects. A group from Pulka community alone buried over 80 children who took ill in the bush and died.”
He added: “As a church we are really going through a severe moment of persecution. Our ecclesiastical circumscription has faced a sharp disintegration. For now, situation is still as before, no improvement whatsoever since our people are still displaced and have no much hope of getting home.”
Obasogie said the church spent over N3 million on all internally displaced persons (IDPs) at different locations in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, during a recent visit, stressing that “the church must bear witness to the Gospel both in word and deed.”
The cleric described the visit as “a practical show of that authentic witnessing,” adding “They had over 200 sacks of maize, rice, cooking oil, blankets, mosquito nets, rubber buckets, mats, cartons of Maggi, beans, sugar etc.”
He further disclosed that the Church “encouraged the people to accept all that is happening to them in humility and to see the hand of God at work even as they are alive today, calling on them not to lose faith, but to use this moment of trial and persecution as a golden opportunity to express abundantly the faith they profess.”
Obasogie listed two things the terrorists can never take away from the Church members as their faith and their soul, saying “These they must never give up even at the point of death.”
