RCC rep: Over Ukraine, world may ignore genocide of Mozambican Christians

Refugees in Mozambique. Photo: cruxnow.com.

The Catholic bishop of northern Mozambique, António Juliasse Ferreira Sandramo of Pemba, said that due to a jihadist campaign mostly targeting Christians in Mozambique, the humanitarian crisis in the country risks being ignored amid global focus on other hotspots such as Ukraine and Gaza.

"The biggest risk is that [the victims] will be forgotten due to other wars in the world," said RCC Bishop Antonio Sandramo, noting that entire villages have been destroyed in his diocese, forcing thousands to flee.

According to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, a new outbreak of a jihadist insurgency in Cabo Delgado "has uprooted at least 14,000 people in recent weeks, many of them children".

"The violence perpetrated in this district in the last two weeks was such that around a dozen villages, some very populous, were targeted, with the destruction of homes and institutions,” he said. “In these villages, all Christian chapels were destroyed," said the RCC hierarch.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people are fleeing but are still being pursued by jihadists “[They] go in search of a safe place. I don’t know where they will find it… maybe, [just] the least insecure one,” he said.

He noted that many people flee carrying "a bundle on their head or on the only family bicycle. It’s all they have left now. It will certainly not be long before hunger, thirst and disease arrive".

The bishop told the story of a young mother, the niece of an employee of the diocesan curia who ran away, taking her newborn baby with her. " Between the heat and the dust, she drank the water she found, developed diarrhoea and vomiting and succumbed [to the disease]. The little baby was left without a mother, without guilt and peace,” he said.

The European Commission estimates that some 3.5 million people now face the prospect of acute food insecurity in northern Mozambique.

As earlier reported, in Burkina Faso terrorists killed 15 Catholics during a service.

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