World in Brief

40-year-old Abudullah Waiswa, a Muslim in Bugiri, eastern Uganda has killed his wife for converting to Christianity. Amina Nanfuka, 31, had returned from a medical check-up in Kampala, where she also attended a worship service at a church.

A relative said ‘We went inside the bedroom and found Amina unconscious with blood coming out of her mouth. She was rushed to a nearby clinic, but the doctor pronounced her dead upon arrival. She had been strangled and hit with an object around her mouth’. The couple had three children, aged 3, 6 and 9.

As police looked on, a group of Muslims in North Sumatra Province, Indonesia, broke up a worship service, asking why a church should be present in a Muslim-majority area.

The attack was the second in two months suffered by the Mawar Sharon Church congregation as they met in a café in Setia village, Binjai. After demonstrations against the church, a hijab-clad Muslim woman led the disruption of the service. A video on social media shows her standing next to a police officer as she loudly refuses to allow Christians to worship.

5,000 people attended a day-long evangelistic event at the Olympic Port in Barcelona that took place with the support of evangelical churches in Catalonia and national and international evangelism and mission ministries. It included celebration meetings, testimonies and worship.

The campaign succeeded despite the Spanish national elections disrupting some of the initial planning, since public spaces were more restricted and political parties were given priority.

Art exhibition Jesus Loves, at the Egidien church, Nuremberg, was closed a few days after it opened. It featured pictures by gay painter Rosa von Praunheim.

Church pastor Thomas Zeitler justified the exhibition, claiming it critically addressed issues such as abuse in the church, misogyny and homophobia. But the Nuremberg deanery cancelled the exhibition after it generated a flood of criticism, complaining that the pictures were provocative. The artworks focused on religion, sexuality, love and death, many showing explicit homoerotic and sexual acts. Some were located behind a curtain as they were for adults only.

Pastor José Vivas has been investigated and detained by the Venezuelan government after words he spoke at the opening of the 2019 March for Jesus were misinterpreted. Vivas had called for spiritual freedom for Venezuela.

The Venezuelan authorities interpreted it as an offence to President Nicolás Maduro. A blatantly unfair trial in 2022 led the pastor to be jailed for a month. But a new court ruling has acquitted him of one of the two charges against him. He was released from prison and is now on parole, before he faces yet another court case.

A Christian nurse and her child have been abducted in Haiti. Charity El Roi Haiti, founded by Sandro Dorsainvil, announced that his wife Alix Dorsainvil and their child had been kidnapped from their campus near Port au Prince whilst serving in a community ministry.

Alix, an American citizen, first visited Haiti following the 2010 earthquake when she was said to have ‘fallen in love with the people’. She has worked as a school nurse for El Roi Haiti since 2020 and she married Sandro in 2021.

The Chosen – the award-winning television series about the life and ministry of Christ – has been given permission to continue filming its fourth season.

Strikes have brought Hollywood to a virtual halt, but after negotiations with entertainment union the Screen Actors Guild, The Chosen is one of very few shows still in production. The series is now entirely reliant on donations, and is totally independent, meaning the union gave it special dispensation to carry on filming.

Archaeological excavations at a 1,600-year-old Jewish synagogue have uncovered ‘spectacular’ mosaics of Samson and other Biblical events.

The discovery, by a team from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was made at the ancient village of Huqoq, in Lower Galilee. The mosaic depicts Bible stories, including Samson and the foxes (Judg.15:4) and Samson carrying the gates of Gaza (Judg.16:3). Newly exposed sections include a Philistine horseman and a dead Philistine soldier.

Attacks and harassment by Jewish extremists pose ‘grave threats’ to the Christian presence in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. This is according to a report to the World Council of Churches by The Justice and Peace Commission of the Council of Heads of Catholic Churches in the Holy Land.

It says: ‘Attacks on Christian clergy, churches, and holy places have made many of our Christian faithful anxious, particularly in Jerusalem and Haifa.’ There have been reports of increased vandalism targeting churches, cemeteries and Christian properties, as well as physical and verbal abuse against Christian clergy.

A series of raids by Iranian security forces have led to the arrest of more than 50 Christian converts. The arrests were part of a succession of arbitrary detentions that have taken place across five cities.

Local advocacy groups are unsure of the reasons behind the sudden crackdown, with all those arrested formerly belonging to Islam’s second-largest branch, Shi’ism, but some believe it marks a deliberate shift in the authorities’ strategy. Conversion from Islam is a serious offence in Iran and classified as a threat to national security, resulting in stringent punishments.

Ukraine has shifted the date of Christmas from 7 January to 25 December, rejecting the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is strongly allied with President Putin.

The move is seen as a breakaway from Russian cultural dominance, as the Orthodox community in Ukraine has distanced itself from Moscow following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Ukraine war has widened the split between the two branches of Orthodox Christianity, especially after the head of the Russian branch, Patriarch Kirill, endorsed the invasion, framing it as a cultural conflict between the Russian world and Western liberalism.

Militant Fulani herdsmen and other terrorists have killed six Christians in Benue state, Nigeria, bringing the total of Christians slain in three weeks to 37.

The attackers arrived on motorbikes at the predominantly Christian villages of Igba-Ukyor and Tse Baka villages, Ushongo County. Ushongo resident Bemgba Iortyom said: ‘The terrorists, who accompanied the armed herdsmen, first attacked Igba-Ukyor, where they killed five Christians, and then drove on to Tse Baka, where they killed another’.