In 2025, 17 Catholic missionaries were killed around the world, four of them on the American continent, between Mexico, Haiti and the United States. The data comes from the annual report of the Vatican agency Fides published this Tuesday (30).
This is one of the lowest numbers in recent times, although it represents an increase compared to the 13 murdered in 2024.
The most lethal continent for these missionaries, priests, nuns, seminarians or lay people was again Africa, where there were a total of ten murdered.
The most dangerous country for Catholics has been Nigeria, where five seminarians and priests were kidnapped and killed in different but violent contexts, followed by Burkina Faso (2), Kenya (1), Sierra Leone (1) and Sudan (1).
Furthermore, this year’s Fides report also included the case of Father Tobias Chukwujekwu, attacked by guerrillas in Burkina Faso on December 26, 2024.
In America, two nuns, Evanette Onezaire and Jeanne Voltaire, were murdered on March 31 in Haiti by armed gangs and, in Mexico, the lifeless body of Father Bertoldo Pantaleón Estrada was found on October 6 between the cities of Zumpango and Mezcala, two days after his disappearance.
The fourth American case is that of the parish priest of Seneca (Kansas, USA), Arul Carasala, shot on April 3 in his home.
In Europe, in 2025, a priest, Grzegorz Dymek, was murdered. The priest’s body was found strangled on February 13 at his residence in Poland.
In Asia, two missionaries died: the Burmese priest Donald Martin, in the context of the civil war in his country, and the Filipino layman Mark Christian Malacca was killed by a firearm.
The report by Fides, the Vatican agency dedicated since 1927 to Pontifical Missionary Societies, counted 626 murdered in the first quarter of this century, between the years 2000 and 2025.
