ACN has launched the ‘Heal Nigeria’ campaign to raise awareness of the work of the local Church and provide urgent support to Christians in the country.
Overnight, you have to leave your home, your job as a farmer, your land, all your crops… the entire history of your traditions, your customs, your ancestral land… your entire life, and you become displaced. And on top of that, you face terrors, nightmares, and immense suffering because one day the Fulani herders’ extremists arrived and went house to house threatening and killing anyone who resisted leaving.
The exodus of displaced Catholics in Benue State (central Nigeria) is incalculable. Today, Christians in this state are suffering severe persecution . Radical Fulani herdsmen are eliminating them, wiping Christian villages off the map with attacks and massacres, all while everyone remains silent.
The survivors are traumatized by the intensity of the violence they witnessed. “Some months later they can’t sleep and still can’t talk about what they experienced ,” says Father Philip, a priest in the Diocese of Makurdi and head of the psycho-spiritual support program that Aid to the Church in Need wants to implement .
More than one and a half million Catholic displaced people live in reception camps in subhuman conditions, broken with pain in their hearts but with their rosaries around their necks and without stopping praying.
“Our people need to regain hope and heal from the violence ,” says Father Philipp, who is appealing for funds for a mental health program aimed at the least of our brothers and sisters: the persecuted and displaced Christians in Benue State.
This program will train 22 mental and spiritual health workers to assist at least 1,500 displaced victims of the massacres , especially women and children. They all live in displacement camps within the Diocese of Makurdi.
“Persecution does not have the last word. We need hope to be restored, and we ask for help to heal our people displaced by violence ,” says the priest, who is fully committed to helping the persecuted and forgotten Christians of his diocese overcome their trauma.
