Some 40 Catholic priests, seminarians and lay people were killed during 2018, almost double the previous years total, according to figures collated by Agenzia Fides.
The Catholic news agency data shows 35 of those killed were priests, one was a seminarian and four were lay people.
Africa, where 21 were killed, supplanted the Americas, where 15 were killed as the region with the highest death toll. In Asia, three were killed and one priest was killed in Europe.
Fides said that many of those killed this year “lost their lives during attempted hold-ups and robberies, ferociously committed, in impoverished, degraded social contexts, where violence is the rule of life, the authority of the state was lacking or weakened by corruption and compromises, or where religion is used for other ends”.
Agenzia Fides uses the term “missionaries” to describe those killed, noting that all those baptised in the Catholic Church, whatever their function and level of instruction in the faith, are considered “an active agent of evangelization”, hence a “missionary”.
