Unknown persons shot dead a priest and pharmacist on the night of December 26, 2024, bringing the number of missionaries and pastoral workers who were murdered around the world during the year just ended to 14.
According to the Vatican agency FidesTobias Chukwujekwu Okonkwo, from the diocese of Nnewi, in southeastern Nigeria, was murdered on the day the Church remembers Saint Stephen, the first martyr.
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Fides reported the unfortunate event on December 31, collecting a statement from the Nigerian diocese of the same day. The diocesan text specifies that the priest “was approached by a group of unidentified people while driving on the Onitsha-Owerri highway, in Ihiala” between 7 and 8 p.m.
Father Tobías “was not only a spiritual pastor,” the diocese states, but he was also a pharmacist who ran various health facilities, such as the nursing and midwifery schools and the medical laboratory of the Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Ihiala.
In its statement, the diocese asks the faithful to join in “prayers and masses” for the soul of the priest, while authorities investigate the case.
There were not 13 but 14 missionaries and pastoral agents who were murdered in 2024
Fides highlights that the murder of Fr. Tobías is added to those recorded in the annual report of the Fides agency, on missionaries and pastoral workers murdered in 2024, which was presented on December 30.
With this death, the total number of pastoral workers and missionaries killed in the year that has just concluded rises to 14, including 9 priests.
In Africa, a total of 7 missionaries were murdered in 2024: 2 in Burkina Faso, 1 in Cameroon, 1 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2 in South Africa and 1 in Nigeria.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.