Reporting on yet another massacre of churchgoers, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Fox News story said machete-armed Islamists butchered 49 churchgoers at a Catholic church in late July.
Todd Nettleton, of Voice of the Martyrs, tells AFN he was informed church youths had gathered for an all-night prayer vigil at Saint Anuarite Catholic Church, located in the city of Komanda.
“So it was young people,” Nettleton says, “who had gathered in the sanctuary to pray through the night.”
The murderous soldiers are Islamic jihadists with Allied Democratic Forces, a guerilla army that is aligned with ISIS or Islamic State.
The church in Komanda is named after a martyred Catholic sister (pictured at right), Marie-Clémentine Anuarite Nengapeta. She was shot and killed in 1964 by a murderous rebel colonel, Pierre Olombe, when she fought his sexual assault.
Voice of the Martyrs, which tracks Christian prosecution worldwide, says the Congo has a Christian majority that is approximately 90% of the population. The radical Islamists attack churches, and kidnap and kill Christians, all along the country’s eastern border with Uganda.
A second African country under constant attack from Islamist terrorists is Mozambique. That nation, which borders South Africa, also has a Christian-majority population.
The goal under Islam is to capture and hold territory, and establish a caliphate, in those countries.
Nettleton says the attack in Komanda happened right under the noses of police, the DRC military, and UN peacekeepers, all of them stationed in the city.
“Christians in DRC right now are very nervous about what their security situation is,” he advises. “Even gathering to worship together is a dangerous activity."
Nettleton points out the Catholic churchgoers in Komanda had gathered for an all-night prayer service.
"Wanting to pray for their country, wanting to pray for peace, wanting to pray for God to move," he says, "and that is what came under attack."
African Christians are known for praying for their Islamic attackers and for forgiving them. Pierre Olombe, the colonel who killed Nengapeta, attended mass in 1985, when Pope John Paul II beatified her. He sat with her parents.
