Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
Pope Leo apparently believes that Muslims are murdering Christians in Nigeria “for economic reasons.” Nigeria’s bishops beg to differ. More on the Pope’s refusal to recognize the violent ideology of Islam as the cause of those murders can be found here: “Pope Leo, slashing the throats of Jews and Christians is not due to the economy,” by Giulio Meotti, Israel National News, November 26, 2025:
Manga is a Christian in Nigeria, the most dangerous place in the world for Christians, the country where a Christian is killed every two hours. Manga was supposed to be one of them. He was returning home as usual after university. His mother was preparing dinner. Terrorists burst into his house. They dragged Manga, his father, and his brother outside, while his mother and younger siblings hid in a room.
“Then they asked my father and the two of us if we were ready to renounce Jesus and embrace Islam,” Manga testified to the NGO “Open Doors.” Manga’s father refused. “So they told us: ‘We will kill you.’ I answered: ‘If you kill us, what do you gain?’” Manga was struck with a rifle butt, and his father was brutally murdered. “They beheaded him and placed his head on his stomach in front of my eyes,” says Manga. “Then they tried to decapitate my brother.” Manga watched helplessly as his family was massacred. Then came his turn. “They took a knife, serrated by their teeth, and tried to cut my neck.” Manga managed to find the strength to pray. The young man was left on the ground, with the bodies of his father and brother before his eyes.
I don’t know what to call all this: “genocide,” “extermination,” “religious cleansing,” but Manga certainly did not suffer because of “the economy.”
“I think that in Nigeria, in certain areas, there is danger for Christians, but [also] for everyone-Christians and Muslims have been massacred,” Pope Leo said recently, responding to a question about Manga’s country.
How many Christians have been massacring Muslims in Nigeria? It’s not impossible that there may have been some, but I have yet to see any reports of this. The pope would like us to believe that all parties are equally guilty in Nigeria; he doesn’t want Muslims singled out.
“There is a terrorism issue,” Leo said. “It is an issue that has much to do with the economy, if you will, with control over the lands they own. Unfortunately, many Christians have died, and I think it is very important for the government, together with all peoples, to promote genuine religious freedom.”…
Has the government not been “promoting genuine religious freedom”? Of course it has. It is the Muslim fanatics of Boko Haram who have been determined to end the “religious freedom” of the Christians, by burning down their churches, killing their priests, and murdering Christian believers who refuse to convert to Islam.
As for Pope Leo’s claiming that “terrorism…is an issue that has much to do with the economy,” it is one more false claim that distracts us from the real cause of Muslim terrorism, which is the texts and teachings of Islam. It’s these texts that instruct Muslims that when they “meet the unbelievers, strike at their necks” (Qur’an 47:4), a message found in a dozen other Qur’anic passages. It is the Qur’an that tells Muslims that they are the “best of peoples” (3:110) and non-Muslims the “most vile of created beings” (98:6). It is in his Hadith that Muhammad announces “I have been made victorious through terror “and “war is deception.”
The author of this piece, Giulio Meotti, continues:
The same line was adopted by the late Pope Francis, who always avoided or bypassed the issue of the mass murder of Christians. On 14 February 2025, Muslim terrorists kidnapped 70 Christians in the Democratic Republic of Congo, brought them into a church, tied them up, and beheaded them. Their bodies were left to rot by the Muslim killers, who did this to demonstrate the supremacy of Islam over Christianity.
Pope Francis made no reference to this massacre of Christians in a Nigerian church; instead, in a meeting with the Slovak Prime Minister, he spoke of the “grave humanitarian emergency in Gaza.” Pope Francis accused Israel of genocide but said: “Let me say clearly that I do not like it when people speak of a ‘genocide of Christians’”.
Why didn’t Pope Francis like people speaking of a “genocide of Christians”? Because it would blacken the name of Muslims, make them feel uneasy about their position in western societies, cause them justifiably to resent their Christian neighbors who might believe such charges — no, for Pope Francis, who wanted above all else to promote an entirely fictional interfaith harmony, such a remark would never do.
Pope Francis didn’t want wonderful Islam to receive the blame, even though the killers of Christians in Nigeria have all been Muslims, determined to show their supremacy, and to terrorize Christians who remained alive to convert to Islam, or die. Pope Francis was the naif who claimed that Islam “is a religion of peace.” He was determined to believe this even though Muslims constantly showed that they disagreed.
The Nigerian clerics, both Catholic and Protestant, know why their flocks are being butchered. It has nothing to do with “economic inequality,” as Pope Leo wants us to believe. It has always been, they asserted, a matter of Muslims conducting an “Islamic Jihad.”
When marauding Muslims burn down churches, kidnap Christian girls, murder priests and ministers, and kill many thousands of Christians year in and year out, the Christians in Nigeria deserve to have their faith leaders, headed by Pope Leo, put the blame where it belongs — on the ideology of Islam, and those who fanatically believe in it. But the pope is either misinformed, or chooses to believe like his predecessor that “Islam is a religion of peace” in order to keep up with this “interfaith harmony” deception that is used by Muslims to keep Christians thinking that, in the end, “people are the same the whole world over” and “everyone wants the same thing — peace.” No, they don’t. Read the Qur’an. Read the Hadith.
