Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 30, 2025 / 18:53 pm (CNA).
The whole nature of Christian martyrdom has shifted in the 21st century, according to Robert Royal, author of the new book “The Martyrs of the New Millennium.”
Interviewed on “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo” on Thursday, Royal said that since his last work on the subject, “The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century,” 25 years ago, the greatest threat to Christians in the world has shifted from totalitarianism to “radical Islam.”
“This is a point of view that really seeks to create a worldwide caliphate. That’s the word that they use,” he said. “These radical Islamic figures, they think about it as establishing an Ottoman Empire, but not just restricted to Turkey and a few of the lands in the Middle East, but a total empire of Islam everywhere.”
He continued: “This is something that the West, in particular, needs to wake up to,” he said, because despite the defeat of ISIS, “it didn’t go away. It’s transferred itself to other parts of the world, and it will come back with a vengeance.”
Africa
Royal especially pointed to radical Islamism “all across Central Africa, across sub-Saharan Africa.”
Discussing the plight of Nigerian Christians, he noted that since finishing the writing of his new book last November, he estimates that since then “something on the order of 2,000 and 3,000 Christians have probably been killed by radical Islam.”
Just this past weekend, an attack by extremist Muslim herdsmen in Nigeria left dozens dead and resulted in the kidnapping of a Catholic priest and several nuns. Hundreds of Jihadist Fulani herdsmen gunned down nearly 40 people, more than half of them Christians, across several villages on Sunday, according to a report by Truth Nigeria, a humanitarian-aid nonprofit that seeks to document Nigeria’s struggles with corruption and crime.
Latin America
“Surprisingly,” Royal said, “organizations that track the martyrdom of priests in particular say that Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world today to be a Catholic priest.” He said that today, persecution of priests in that country “is the result of cartels, human traffickers, drug traffickers, and anybody who steps in front of what those criminal organizations are trying to do puts themselves at risk.”
In Nicaragua, he said, systematic persecution against Christians similarly stems from corruption from those seeking power.
“Now it’s not so much a matter of Marxism as it is a matter of a family wanting to control a country in which the Church is the only effective opposition to their tyranny,” Royal observed, referring to the government of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. “They’re closing down TV stations, radio stations, and have expelled bishops and priests. It’s an old playbook, but now it’s being used for the sake of a particular family rather than an ideology.”
The Ortega dictatorship has kidnapped, imprisoned, murdered, and forcefully expelled bishops, priests, and religious sisters from the country, shut down Catholic schools and organizations, and restricted religious practice nationwide.
China
“The situation in China is very discouraging because our own Church made a very bad bargain with a totalitarian regime,” he said, pointing out that while overt persecution has declined in the country, the Chinese Communist Party has continued to restrict the Church. Ten bishops have also been reported missing, he noted.
“We know that there are images of President Xi inside of churches. There are attempts to rewrite parts of the Gospels to point it in the direction of the Communist Party. They’re being more careful about creating martyrs because, of course, that raises the international temperature against China,” he said. “But they do it.”
“Now we have a pope who was head of the committee in the Vatican who appointed bishops,” Royal said, noting that Pope Leo XIV has also been to the country himself. “It’ll be very interesting to see if he is able to do anything.”
The Vatican renewed its agreement with China on the appointment of Catholic bishops for four more years in October 2024. Originally signed in September 2018, the provisional agreement was previously renewed for a two-year period in 2020 and again in October 2022.
The terms of the agreement have not been made public, though the late Pope Francis had said it includes a joint commission between the Chinese government and the Vatican on the appointment of Catholic bishops, overseen by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
The West
“We should not consider ourselves exempt from persecution,” Royal said of Christians living in Western countries. “We do have, of course, radical Islamic figures in Europe and in the United States, Australia, all the countries we normally think of as the West.”
Royal cited the findings by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, which records hundreds of anti-Christian hate crimes per year.
“France alone loses about two religious buildings a month,” he said. He also mentioned the cases of pro-life protesters jailed in the U.K. for praying outside of abortion clinics.
Royal also called for vigilance in the U.S., as sectors of American society also seek to pin “hate speech” labels on traditional Christian beliefs.
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