EWTN News portal reports that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has identified Fulani militants as the primary perpetrators of religious violence in Nigeria, causing the highest number of deaths among all religious communities in the past year. The report details widespread displacement, destruction of churches, and targeting of both Christian and Muslim communities in the Middle Belt region. While the article presents itself as a straightforward human rights report on religious persecution, its entire framework rests upon the fundamentally modernist and liberal conception of “religious freedom” that the Catholic Church has repeatedly condemned, reducing the supernatural reality of persecution for the Faith to a matter of secular governance and bilateral security discussions, while completely omitting the only true solution: the social reign of Christ the King.
The Idolatry of “Religious Freedom” as a Framework for Understanding Persecution
The USCIRF report, as presented by EWTN News, operates entirely within the conceptual framework of Dignitatis Humanae, the conciliar declaration on religious freedom that represents one of the most catastrophic reversals of Catholic social teaching in history. The very term “religious freedom” as employed by this commission presupposes the modernist error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to exclude all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77). The article’s consistent use of this framework — speaking of “religious freedom conditions,” “safe practice of religious freedom,” and bilateral security discussions aimed at protecting this “freedom” — implicitly endorses the heretical proposition that the Catholic Church has no right to the protection and patronage of the state, and that Islam, animism, and all other false religions stand on equal footing before civil authority.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Immortale Dei, taught with magisterial clarity that “the Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each supreme in its own kind, and each fixed within limits which are defined by its own nature and special object”. The state’s obligation is not to guarantee a relativistic “freedom” of worship, but to recognize the Catholic Church as the one true Church of Christ and to protect her in the exercise of her mission. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations, both male and female, who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom” — a freedom that flows from the Church’s divine constitution, not from an abstract “right” granted by secular power.
The article’s framework, by treating the Fulani violence as a “religious freedom” issue rather than what it truly is — a manifestation of the consequences of the rejection of Christ the King’s social reign — commits the fundamental error of seeking a purely naturalistic solution to a supernatural problem. Nigeria’s crisis is not primarily a failure of security policy or governance; it is the inevitable fruit of the rejection of the Catholic social order and the imposition of liberal secularism upon nations that were once evangelized by the Church.
The Reduction of Persecution to Secular Human Rights Discourse
The USCIRF report’s language is saturated with the bureaucratic terminology of secular human rights: “countries of particular concern,” “bilateral security discussions,” “displacement camps,” and “underlying conditions conducive to the safe practice of religious freedom.” This vocabulary reveals the profoundly naturalistic mentality that pervades the analysis. There is no mention whatsoever of the supernatural dimension of the suffering endured by the victims — no reference to the grace of martyrdom, the necessity of prayer and penance, the invocation of the Church’s intercession, or the eternal consequences of the crimes being committed.
The article states that “central Nigeria remains entrenched in an intense, daily, and seemingly perpetual crisis of insecurity — a crisis that is likely to persist until the federal and several state governments create broader underlying conditions that are more conducive to the safe practice of religious freedom”. This diagnosis is not merely incomplete; it is theologically bankrupt. It reduces the persecution of Christians to a matter of governmental policy, as though the creation of “conducive conditions” by secular authorities could resolve what is fundamentally a spiritual crisis. The Church has always taught that true peace and justice are only possible through the recognition of Christ’s kingship over society. Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority”.
The invocation of the Trump administration’s designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” and “ongoing bilateral security discussions” reveals the utter futility of seeking solutions from secular powers operating within a liberal framework. The United States government, itself founded upon the principles of religious indifferentism and the separation of Church and Christ from the state, is structurally incapable of addressing the root cause of religious persecution. As Pope Pius IX warned in the Syllabus: “The civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government: hence, it can pass judgment on the instructions issued for the guidance of consciences” (Proposition 44, condemned). The very concept of a secular commission adjudicating “religious freedom” is an exercise in the condemned error of civil supremacy over spiritual matters.
The Omission of Islam’s Theological Nature and the Duty of Evangelization
While the article dutifully reports that the Fulani are a “Muslim-majority ethnic group” and that religion is one of “multiple and overlapping factors” motivating the violence, it carefully avoids any substantive analysis of Islam’s theological imperative to expand dar al-Islam (the house of Islam) through jihad. The USCIRF’s cautious formulation — “multiple and overlapping factors, including religion in many cases, likely spur Fulani militants to attack communities or individuals” — represents the kind of studied ambiguity that serves to obscure rather than illuminate.
The Catholic Church has always recognized that Islam is a false religion and that its expansion by force constitutes a grave injustice against both God and the human persons who are thereby deprived of the means of salvation. The duty of the Church and of Catholic states is not to create “conditions conducive to the safe practice of religious freedom” for Muslims, but to evangelize them — to bring them to the knowledge of the truth that Jesus Christ is the only-begotten Son of God and that there is no salvation outside the Church. As Pius XI taught in Quas Primas, the reign of Christ extends over all peoples, including Muslims, and the Church’s mission is to bring all nations under that reign through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments.
The article’s complete silence on the duty of evangelization is symptomatic of the post-conciliar abandonment of the Church’s missionary mandate. Since the conciliar revolution, the structures occupying the Vatican have systematically replaced the imperative of conversion with the modernist nostrum of “dialogue” and “mutual understanding.” This represents a betrayal of the divine commission given by Christ Himself: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19).
The Complicity of Post-Conciliar Structures and the Failure of “Interreligious Dialogue”
The article notes that “some Christian advocates have continued to suggest that security forces responding to or investigating attacks routinely show favoritism toward Muslim communities”. While this is presented as an allegation by unnamed “advocates,” the reality is that such favoritism is not merely alleged but is the predictable consequence of decades of “interreligious dialogue” promoted by the conciliar sect, which has systematically undermined the Church’s claim to exclusive truth and her right to preferential treatment by Catholic states.
The post-conciliar abandonment of the Church’s missionary mandate and her replacement with the false ecumenism of Nostra Aetate has created a situation in which Catholic communities in Africa and elsewhere are left defenseless — not because the Church lacks the spiritual resources to protect her children, but because the conciliar structures have systematically dismantled the institutional and doctrinal framework through which that protection was once exercised. The “Christian advocates” who complain of favoritism are, in many cases, themselves operating within the conciliar framework that has made such favoritism inevitable.
Furthermore, the article’s reliance on USCIRF — a U.S. government commission — as the primary source of analysis and the implied agent of solution reveals the extent to which even those who identify as Catholic have internalized the liberal democratic framework. The Catholic Church does not need the United States government to defend her children; she needs faithful bishops and priests who will preach the integral Faith, administer the sacraments, and form Catholic communities capable of resisting both physical persecution and spiritual seduction.
The Suffering of the Faithful and the Silence on Supernatural Remedies
The article reports horrific atrocities: the massacre of 73 Christians in Benue state, the displacement of at least 1.3 million people, the burning of homes and churches, sexual violence, and kidnapping. These are grave crimes against both divine and natural law, and the suffering of the victims demands not merely secular policy responses but the full spiritual arsenal of the Church.
Yet the article is completely silent on the supernatural remedies that the Church has always prescribed for times of persecution: prayer, penance, fasting, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, the reception of the sacraments, and above all, the recognition of the social reign of Christ the King as the only true foundation of justice and peace. Pius XI, in instituting the Feast of Christ the King, explicitly addressed the “seeds of discord sown everywhere, flames of envy and hostility” that afflict nations, and declared that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior”.
The omission of these supernatural remedies is not accidental; it is symptomatic of the naturalistic mentality that pervades the entire report and the article that reports it. By reducing the crisis to a matter of “security conditions” and “governmental policy,” the analysis implicitly denies the efficacy of prayer and the sacraments, the reality of the spiritual combat being waged, and the necessity of supernatural grace for the resolution of the crisis.
Conclusion: The Only True Solution
The Fulani militant violence in Nigeria, as reported by USCIRF and relayed by EWTN News, is a terrible manifestation of the consequences of the rejection of Christ the King’s social reign. The liberal framework of “religious freedom” within which the report operates is itself one of the fruits of that rejection — a framework condemned by the Church’s authentic Magisterium and incapable of providing any true solution to the crisis.
The only true remedy for the persecution of Christians in Nigeria — and everywhere else — is the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King, the evangelization of the Muslim population, the abandonment of the modernist errors of religious liberty and false ecumenism, and the return to the integral Catholic social teaching of the pre-conciliar popes. As Pius XI declared: “Oh, what happiness we would enjoy if individuals, families, and states allowed themselves to be governed by Christ”. Until that happiness is pursued through the recognition of Our Lord’s kingship over all nations and all aspects of human life, reports such as this will continue to document atrocities without ever pointing toward the only true source of peace and justice.
Source:
Fulani militants cause most deaths in Nigeria religious violence, USCIRF says (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 28.05.2026