Pope Leo XIV has spoken by telephone with Pope Tawadros II, leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, encouraging closer unity among Christians at a time of growing conflict and division in the Middle East.
A Christian family in Pakistan has accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearance of their 16-year-old daughter, who they say was abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and later married online to a man based in the United Arab Emirates.
At least 19 Christians were killed in two separate attacks in Nigeria’s Plateau state within a 24-hour period, according to local residents and community leaders.
A Kuki village inside Myanmar was reported burnt on 12 May, deepening fears of a wider conflict between two predominantly Christian communities along Manipur’s volatile frontier with Myanmar.
A 33-year-old Christian sanitation worker in Pakistan has died after being forced to enter a deep sewer system, raising fresh concerns over unsafe working conditions and alleged discrimination against Christian labourers.
Although Bangladesh has dropped to 33rd place on the latest World Watch List, Christians in the country continue to experience serious persecution in different forms, including family rejection, violence, and community pressure.
Witnesses at a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom hearing on Thursday, May 7, called on the American government to take urgent action against what they described as systematic persecution of religious minorities in India, including Christians, Muslims and Sikhs.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced on 21 April that two soldiers would be imprisoned and pulled out of active combat after one was photographed destroying a statue of Jesus Christ with a sledgehammer in a Christian village in southern Lebanon.
India said on April 17 that it is examining Bangladesh's formal request to extradite convicted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as part of "ongoing judicial and internal legal processes," offering one of the most detailed public statement New Delhi has made since the request was formally raised at high-level bilateral talks nine days earlier.
A Pakistani court’s decision to uphold the marriage of a 13-year-old Christian girl to the man accused of abducting her has triggered protests, international concern, and renewed demands for the protection of minority girls across the country.
Nepal’s police detained former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Nepali Congress leader and former home minister Ramesh Lekhak on Saturday morning, March 28, in connection with a culpable homicide case arising from the deaths of 77 people during the youth-led protests of September 2025.
India ranked 105 out of 179 countries on the Liberal Democracy Index in 2025, down from 100 the previous year, according to the Democracy Report 2026 released this week by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The country has remained classified as an “electoral autocracy” since 2017.
