AMAC Exclusive – By Ben Solis
Despite purporting to be a devout Catholic, President Joe Biden has said virtually nothing about the rising persecution of Christians around the world – even as his own administration’s harassment of Christians reaches new depths of cruelty at home.
Last November, Biden announced a new “national strategy” to counter Islamophobia, citing a “disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.” But the president has expressed no such concern for Christians who are the targets of similar attacks in the United States.
Following the Dobbs Supreme Court decision in 2022, for instance, dozens of churches and pro-life pregnancy centers were attacked and vandalized in a clear campaign of anti-Christian violence. One radical pro-abortion group called Jane’s Revenge claimed credit for at least 18 of these attacks – yet Biden’s Department of Justice failed to prosecute even one member of the group.
Instead, the DOJ under Biden has directed its efforts toward harassing and imprisoning Christians. Last year, an FBI field office infamously produced a widely distributed internal memo describing traditionalist Catholics (defined as those who partake in the Latin Mass) as an “extremist threat.”
While ignoring violent attacks on churches, the Biden administration has also prosecuted Christian pro-life activists for praying and singing hymns outside abortion clinics. Some now face prison sentences of up to 11 years.
In decades gone by, the United States was seen as the world’s foremost defender of Christians. Unsurprisingly, however, as Biden targets people of faith at home, Christians are also facing increasing persecution around the world.
Take, for instance, the story of Father Genrich Okolotovych, a parish priest in Belarus who was arrested last November just before dawn.
Okolotovych, who preached Christ’s call that whoever tries to save their life in the circumstances of omnipresent iniquity and injustice will lose it, but whoever loses his life will save it, was 70 years old and recovering from a serious illness. Two days after his mysterious disappearance, concerned believers finally received confirmation from authorities that he had been arrested and charged with treason. No further details were given.
Okolotovych, it should be noted, is no stranger to prisons and persecutions. He was fined 30 times and arrested in the 1980s for “illegal prayers, catechesis, and pilgrimages.” He was also deemed a “Vatican spy” for saying mass at a cemetery where victims of the Katyn massacre (a mass execution of 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia perpetrated by the Soviet Union) are buried.
In one of his last homilies before his arrest, Okolotovych implored his congregation to “tell the truth in every circumstance. You have to honor this profound desire of every person, especially a young person. The truth for a young conscience is like milk for a child. The truth for a mature person is like a meat for muscles.”
This resounding and authoritative call was apparently a threat to the Belarus dictatorship which, despite Okolotovych’s frail health, jailed him in a Minsk prison dubbed “America” during the Cold War since so many dissidents accused of spying for the CIA were held there.
According to the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Father Okolotovych was one of 86 members of the clergy and 44 Catholic priests who were imprisoned in 2023. While ACN counted 10 clergy who were arrested in Belarus last year, other sources put that number at closer to 30 – it is difficult to know for sure in countries with such repressive governments.
The nation which led the world in jailed clergy according to ACN was Nicaragua, with 46 arrests in 2023, including two bishops who were later forcibly exiled to the Vatican.
Nigerian Christians have also suffered from an increasing tide of terrorist attacks perpetrated by al-Qaeda and ISIS-affiliated groups which are targeting church buildings, parishes, religious schools, and even medical centers managed by Christian missionaries. Last year, Muslim terrorists killed 14 clergy in the African nation, including 11 priests and a bishop. The renowned organization Open Doors has reported that attackers assaulted churches 750 times nationwide, saying even this was “a very conservative estimate.”
Father Simeon Fajoluwafemi, a senior Franciscan priest from the diocese of Shendam in the central Plateau State, told me that terrorist groups appeared more active today than in the past in targeting Christians. He specifically noted that he felt prior American presidential administrations were “authentically interested” in religious freedom in his region, and that this “kept the Islamist terrorist cells in check.”
“America has abandoned Christians,” he concluded.
To make matters worse, the Nigerian government also persecutes Christians. In 2023, a total of 28 clergy were arrested by the government, including three nuns.
In Algeria, just four Protestant churches remain open out of 46 just a few years ago, and the government has begun imprisoning church leaders.
Among the chief persecutors of bishops, priests, and nuns is communist China, where ACN investigators confirmed at least twenty cases of religious persecution resulting in imprisonment last year. Open Doors also reported that churches are “under unprecedented attack” in China. Many Christian churches have gone underground and begun meeting in secret.
Even in India, the world’s largest democracy, Christians face immense persecution. As of last September, there had already been 525 attacks on Christians in 2023 according to the United Christian Forum – already making it one of the most violent years for India’s Christian community. Ethnic violence in certain parts of the country has also led to hundreds of churches being destroyed.
Although Biden cannot be blamed for all of this persecution, his silence is nonetheless stunning for a self-professed devout Catholic. With the largest platform in the world, he has chosen to ignore the plight of Christians, and the enemies of the church have taken notice.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
