Seventeen Catholic missionaries and pastoral workers were killed worldwide in 2025, most of them while carrying out ordinary ministry in places experiencing ongoing violence, conflict and social breakdown, according to a year-end report released Dec. 30 by the Pontifical Mission Societies information agency, Agenzia Fides.
The victims included priests, women religious, seminarians, and lay catechists. In its report, Fides said the missionaries killed in 2025 “were not in the spotlight for spectacular deeds,” but they bore witness to Christ “in their everyday life, even in contexts marked by violence and conflict.”
According to the report, Africa recorded the highest number of killings, with 10 missionaries murdered in 2025, followed by four in the Americas, two in Asia, and one in Europe. In Africa, Nigeria accounted for half of the deaths, alongside killings in Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Sudan. In the Americas, two women religious were murdered in Haiti, while priests were killed in Mexico and the United States. Asia’s victims included a priest killed in Myanmar and another in the Philippines. The sole European killing occurred in Poland.
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Among those named in the report is Emmanuel Alabi, a young Nigerian seminarian who died during a forced march after gunmen attacked a minor seminary, wounded him and kidnapped him with two companions. In Haiti, Sisters Evanette Onezaire and Jeanne Voltaire were killed by members of an armed gang amid the country’s ongoing instability. The report also highlighted Donald Martin, described as the first Burmese Catholic priest killed in Myanmar’s civil conflict, whose body was found mutilated on parish grounds.
Fides cited Pope Leo XIV, who wrote that the hope carried by missionaries killed for their faith is “a hope filled with immortality because their witness lives on as a prophecy of the victory of good over evil.”
From 2000 through 2025, a total of 626 Catholic missionaries have been killed worldwide, according to Fides, a figure the agency says reflects the persistent risks faced by pastoral workers serving in areas of war, criminal violence and persecution.
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