EWTN News reports that on April 28, 2026, Father Subash Pulok Gomes, OMI, an Oblate missionary aged 51, was beaten, tortured, and robbed at De Mazenod Catholic Church in Baridhara, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Three Muslim men were subsequently arrested on April 30 in connection with the assault. The attackers, arriving by rickshaw, scaled the church perimeter wall, cut through a grille, and entered the priest’s bedroom at approximately 2:30 a.m., making off with 250,000 taka ($2,037), the priest’s passport, and other documents. Father Gomes stated in his police report: “They beat me and tortured me and tied me up and fought with me, and my nose and face were injured… When I was crying, they covered my face with a cloth and beat me.” This incident is part of a broader pattern of escalating violence against Bangladesh’s Christian minority, which constitutes less than 0.5% of the country’s 180 million people. Previous attacks include bomb detonations at St. Mary’s Cathedral (Nov. 7, 2025), St. Joseph’s Higher Secondary School (Nov. 7, 2025), and Holy Rosary Church (Oct. 8, 2025), as well as the 2001 Gopalganj bombing that killed 10 Catholics during Sunday Mass. Christian leaders, including Nirmal Rozario of the Bangladesh Christian Association, have condemned the attacks and demanded government investigation. Notably, Father Gomes and Church authorities filed only a general diary rather than a formal criminal case, citing “religious and spiritual reasons.” This report, while documenting genuine persecution, is framed entirely within the modernist paradigm of “religious freedom” — a concept condemned by the Church — and omits any supernatural theological context, reducing the suffering of the faithful to a matter of secular human rights rather than an occasion for martyrdom and the triumph of the Faith.
