From imprisonment to torture to beheadings, more Christians worldwide live in fear for their lives than at any time in the modern era.

OTTAWA - In a time of severe crisis around the world, Parliamentarians must show integrity and humility in public life, said Cardinal Thomas Collins.

MANCHESTER, England - The president of the Nigerian bishops' conference said his country's government could defeat the Boko Haram Islamist militant group if it could muster the same political will it found to fight Ebola.

NAIROBI, Kenya - While the Nigerian government negotiates with the Islamic militant group Boko Haram for the release of 200 abducted schoolgirls, some Church leaders in the country’s conflict-ridden north are expressing doubts about any impending resolution.

LAGOS, Nigeria - Nearly 200 churches in the Maiduguri Diocese in northeastern Nigeria have been destroyed or razed by Boko Haram insurgents since August, a diocesan official said.

NAIROBI, KENYA - Five months after Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls in Nigeria’s Borno State, the Islamic extremist group has begun occupying churches in the country’s northeastern region, Church officials there said.

In northern Nigeria, mounting fears of militant female suicide bombers have raised calls to ban the hijab, or the veil that covers the head, chest and, in some cases, the entire body.

As we celebrate Canada Day we may not have a team in the exciting World Cup soccer tournament this month, but events surrounding it remind us that we’re so fortunate to live here. One news story really drove this point home: people in soccer-mad Africa are being killed by Islamist extremists for watching the games on television. 

VATICAN CITY - From Montreal to the Vatican, Cameroon to northern Italy, statements expressing “great joy” accompanied the news that a Canadian sister of Notre-Dame and two Italian missionary priests were released unharmed almost two months after being kidnapped in northern Cameroon.

A Canadian missionary nun taken hostage with two Italian priests in Cameroon has been freed.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican issued an urgent appeal today for the release of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

YAOUNDE, Cameroon - The Catholic bishops' conference of Cameroon has demanded the release of two Italian priests and a Canadian nun, a month after they were kidnapped by suspected Nigerian Islamists.

VATICAN CITY - The kidnapping of 300 teenage schoolgirls by the Islamist group Boko Haram has shamed Nigeria, Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan said May 7.

Christians began a three-day prayer and fasting period after Islamist Boko Haram militants kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria and desperate parents joined the search in a remote forest.

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNS) -- A Nigerian archbishop joined others in his country in questioning the wisdom of a plan that the Nigerian government dialogue with the Boko Haram Islamic sect, responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the past several years.

Critics, including Archbishop Felix Job of Ibadan, urged Nigerian authorities to be cautious of negotiating with an extremist "faceless group" that had been involved in maiming and killing of innocent Nigerians.

Archbishop Job also criticized a Boko Haram suggestion that among its delegates to the negotiations in Saudi Arabia would be former Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the country's military ruler from 1983 to 1985 and a presidential candidate in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

Archbishop Job told Catholic News Service by telephone: "Is it not funny that the Boko Haram group, a faceless group, has a spokesman" and is seeking "dialogue with the Nigerian government as a means of resolving the insecurity?"

"Nigerians have not been told who are the sponsors of the faceless sectarian group that had been maiming and killing innocent Nigerians over time," he said. He said he wondered if the general's nomination might be "translated into meaning that he is indirectly one of the financiers of the sect."

Bishop M. John Goltok of Bauchi wondered why Saudi Arabia was chosen as the venue for the dialogue.

"There are a lot of complications involved in the issue,'' he said.

Among Boko Haram's targets have been Christian churches. One of the most recent attacks occurred Oct. 28 in the city of Kaduna, when a car bomb slammed into St. Rita's Catholic Church, killing at least eight people and injuring 135 -- many of them children.