In need of protection

The Bishop of Truro’s interim report on the suffering of Christians abroad makes for grim reading. In some countries, the “level and nature” of persecution is approaching “the international definition of genocide”: in Iraq, the number of Christians has fallen from 1.5 million before the Iraq War to fewer than 120,000 today. The most dangerous place to be a Christian might well be Nigeria. In 2018, the country accounted for 3,731 of the 4,136 murders of believers, or 90 per cent of the total.

Why doesn’t the West do or say more? The Bishop himself has said that post-colonial guilt and the belief that Christianity is the religion of the rich and powerful have coloured Western reaction, which, if true, betray an ignorant and Eurocentric world view. In parts of South Asia, for instance, Christianity is widespread among the very poorest, while persecution also occurs in countries that gained independence centuries ago and have large Christian populations. In Mexico, 45 priests and one cardinal have been murdered since 1990.

Jeremy Hunt put it pithily: inaction is down to “political correctness”. Hopefully the Foreign Office will consider the full report’s conclusions when released in the summer and, for a change, actually do something. Britain is a Christian country and thus has a particular responsibility to speak out on behalf of the faithful. They are not just numbers on the pages of a report, but flesh-and-blood members of a worldwide family.