VATICAN CITY – Indian Salesian Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who was abducted by Islamic State militants in Yemen and held captive for more than a year, was freed.

NEW DELHI – Yemen's foreign minister told Indian officials that Salesian Father Thomas Uzhunnalil, kidnapped in Yemen last year, is still alive, and efforts to trace him continue.

MONTREAL - Notre Dame Sister Gilberte Bussiere, 76, was kidnapped in the middle of the night in April 2014, in Tchere, a small hamlet in northern Cameroon.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja and Sheik Nura Khalid, chief imam of Apo Legislators Quarters Jumu'at Mosque, joined the members of the #BringBackOurGirls movement Aug. 27 to mark the 500 days that more than 200 girls of the Government Secondary School, Chibok, who were abducted by Boko Haram in their dormitory April 14, 2014.

JERUSALEM - Christians in the Middle East are facing difficulties ranging from "bad" to "less bad," said Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem.

AMMAN, Jordan - Arab Christians are viewing with growing concern and revulsion an uptick in kidnappings of both their clergy and civilians as violence worsens in Syria and Iraq.

LVIV, Ukraine - Ukrainian Catholic Father Tykhon Kulbaka was headed to the chapel in the room rented by the local Catholic community. En route, he stopped at a grocery store, where four men grabbed him, blindfolded him and made him breathe chloroform.

MANCHESTER, England - Christina Khider Abada was seated beside her mother, Ayda Abada, on a bus when captors from the Islamic State snatched her three-year-old daughter and took her away.

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.