Seventeen Catholic missionaries and pastoral workers were killed worldwide in 2025, whose deaths were linked to pastoral service across regions marked by violence and conflict.
According to a year-end report released by Fides News Agency, those killed in 2025 included priests, women religious, seminarians, and laypeople.
The agency noted that the missionaries were not known for high-profile or spectacular actions, but for bearing witness to Christ in daily life, often in environments shaped by violence and instability.
Introducing the report, Pope Leo XIV reflected on the meaning of Christian hope in the face of such deaths, describing it as “a hope filled with immortality because their witness lives on as a prophecy of the victory of good over evil.”
The report said the phrase points to “the source of Christian hope, the pledge of a life that does not die.”
Africa recorded the highest number of killings, with 10 pastoral workers murdered during the year. These included six priests, two seminarians, and two catechists.
Four missionaries were killed in the Americas, two in Asia, and one in Europe. Fides said Africa and the Americas have alternated in recent years as the regions with the highest number of such deaths.
In Africa, five of those killed were in Nigeria, two in Burkina Faso, and one each in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Sudan. In the Americas, two nuns were murdered in Haiti, one priest was killed in Mexico, and another priest of Indian origin was killed in the United States.
In Asia, one priest was murdered in Myanmar, and another priest was killed in the Philippines. The sole European case involved a priest who lost his life in Poland.
Among those named in the report was Emmanuel Alabi, a young Nigerian seminarian who died during a forced march after attackers raided the minor seminary in Ivianokpodi. He was wounded and later kidnapped along with two companions.
Also cited were Sister Evanette Onezaire and Sister Jeanne Voltaire, who were murdered by members of armed gangs in Haiti, and Donald Martin, identified as the first Burmese Catholic priest killed in Myanmar’s civil conflict. His mutilated body was later found by parishioners within a parish compound.
Fides reported that from 2000 to 2025, a total of 626 Catholic missionaries have been killed worldwide.
