A gang of some 30 Islamic terrorists stormed a Catholic seminary in eastern Burkina Faso the night of February 10, burning two dormitories and destroying a crucifix.
Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a pontifical charity that supports the high school seminary of Saint Kisito de Bougui, reported the attack Friday.
“[ACN] has received the sad news that the minor seminary Saint Kisito de Bougui, in the diocese of Fada N’Gourma, East Burkina Faso, located about ten kilometers from Fada N’Gourma, was attacked,” the organization said in a statement, adding that the terrorists had threatened bodily harm to the students if they remain in the seminary.
“Though there were no losses in human life, there was a lot of material damage,” ACN said. “They told the seminarians that they should go now, because they will come back and, if some remain, they will be killed.”
The 30 or so jihadists arrived on motorcycles around 8:00 p.m. and remained for over an hour. ACN described the extent of the damage as the torching of two dormitories, a classroom, and an automobile, the theft of a second car, and the destruction of a crucifix — with the militants insisting they “don’t want to see crosses.”
There are currently 146 students for the priesthood in residence at the seminary, as well as seven staff members, all of whom have been temporarily sent back to their family homes.
In addition to the seminarians’ departure, many locals are “very afraid and some of them are leaving,” ACN noted.
“Burkina Faso has been living through this silent torment for years now. It is a slow agony that has prompted an exodus of over 1.3 million internal refugees,” ACN spokesperson Maria Lozano told Crux, an online Catholic news outlet.
“Once an oasis of stability and internal peace, since 2015 the country has been drifting ever further into chaos,” she said. “Jihadists and criminal gangs are inflicting violence upon large parts of the predominantly Muslim country.”
Burkina Faso has witnessed a startling increase in attacks by jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Last November, ACN reported that security in northern Burkina Faso had drastically deteriorated and armed groups are creating “a reign of terror over the whole population,” with Christians drawing especially severe persecution because of their faith.
Similarly, the 2022 World Watch List produced by Christian watchdog group Open Doors reported that Islamist extremist groups have a “huge and growing influence” in Burkina Faso.
“Jihadist violence has been rapidly increasing in recent years, and extremists have exploited the government’s weakness during the COVID-19 crisis to gain control of the country’s infrastructure,” the group declared. “This has led to numerous attacks on churches (often during worship services) and predominantly Christian villages, and hundreds of church closures.”
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