{"id":78813,"date":"2025-11-17T10:29:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T10:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=78813"},"modified":"2025-11-17T10:29:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T10:29:31","slug":"pope-flags-nigeria-for-christian-persecution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/11\/17\/pope-flags-nigeria-for-christian-persecution\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Flags Nigeria for Christian Persecution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Oso Abidemi<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pope Leo XIV has listed Nigeria among countries where Christians face recurring attacks on worshippers and places of worship, alongside Bangladesh, Mozambique and Sudan.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on his official X handle on Sunday, the pontiff expressed concern over rising cases of discrimination and violence against Christian communities worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>He urged prayers for peace, saying, \u201cGod is a merciful Father who desires peace among all His children.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Pope also called for prayers for families in Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, where recent massacres claimed several civilian lives.<\/p>\n<p>His comments come amid renewed global scrutiny of Nigeria\u2019s security situation.<\/p>\n<p>On October 31, US President Donald Trump designated Nigeria a \u201cCountry of Particular Concern\u201d over alleged Christian genocide, a claim the Federal Government has rejected as misleading.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, US Congressman Riley Moore faulted President Bola Tinubu\u2019s position that Nigeria does not encourage religious persecution, insisting the situation on the ground suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Oso Abidemi Pope Leo XIV has listed Nigeria among countries where Christians face recurring attacks on worshippers and places of worship, alongside Bangladesh, Mozambique and Sudan. In a post on his official X handle on Sunday, the pontiff expressed concern over rising cases of discrimination and violence against Christian communities worldwide. He urged prayers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":78814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,1681],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78813"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78816,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78813\/revisions\/78816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}