Religious Freedom

As reports spread that U.S. President Donald Trump appealed directly to China’s Xi Jinping to free jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai when they met in South Korea Oct. 30, American theologian George Weigel told OSV News that Lai “is a non-violent, deeply committed defender of not simply his rights to free speech, but to those of the people of Hong Kong” and that his “witness to human dignity and to basic human rights is an expression of his Catholic faith.”

Faith is a matter of life and death in northern Nigeria, said Bishop John Bogna Bakeni of Maiduguri.

Nigeria’s return to the U.S. list of countries of “particular concern” over Christian persecution has drawn mixed reactions from church leaders and triggered a heated debate in Africa’s most populous nation.

Two imprisoned journalists, Belarusian Catholic Andrzej Poczobut and Georgian Mzia Amaglobeli, have been named laureates of the 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, to be awarded by the European Parliament Dec. 16.