Comments at the Launch of the ACIN 2025 World Report on Religious
Freedom in the World
A Plea & Testimony
from Nigeria
By
Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop, Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Nigeria, Delivered at
the Augustinianum Hall, on October 21st, 2021, Vatican City.
1: I want to
thank Aid to the Church in Need for their kind invitation to me to speak in
response to the release of their biennial report on, Religious Freedom in the
World. The report itself is a huge document of 1248 pages. It covers the state
of Religious Freedom around the entire world between Jan 2023 & December
2024. According to the authors, the report reveals a worrying decline that
shows more than 5.4 billion living today in countries without religious
freedom. It is important to note that this report neither targets a particular
country nor a particular faith. It cuts across all faiths and focuses only on
the degree to which countries comply with this fundamental human right. The
report identifies authoritarianism, religious extremism, ethno-religious
nationalism and organized crime as drivers of religious persecution. To
rephrase Leo Tolstoy therefore; Every victim of persecution is persecuted
differently.