Catholic News
Ghazal Marzban, an Iranian Islamic law graduate and Catholic convert, has been sentenced to 9 years and 8 months in prison by an Iranian Revolutionary Court on 25 May 2026. Judge Iman Afshari ruled she was guilty of propaganda against the state and gathering and collusion against national...
Protestant News
Over two million Christians live in Saudi Arabia, almost all of them migrant workers from poorer nations. There is not a single church in the entire kingdom. Conversion from Islam officially carries the death penalty, although Open Doors notes the punishment has not been executed in...
Protestant News
Israel has released Layan Nasir, a Palestinian Anglican woman from St Peter's Anglican Church in Birzeit, West Bank, after holding her for eight months without formal charges. She walked out of Damon Prison at Daliyat al Karmel on 21 May 2026.
Protestant News
Jordanian Senator Michael Nazzal, who chairs the Tourism Committee in Jordan's upper house, visited the country's Evangelical Council on 11 May 2026 in what is being read as a corrective gesture. Evangelicals had been excluded from an earlier parliamentary meeting with Catholic and...
Religious Liberty
Awring Nawroz Shaways, founding president of the Kurdish Genocide Lobby Center, has delivered a remarkable address at the European Parliament on 12 May 2026, presenting Iraqi Kurdistan as a working religious freedom model for the broader Middle East.
Persecution
Syria, where the Apostle Paul was struck blind on the Damascus road and where Christianity took root 2,000 years ago, has seen its Christian population collapse from 1.5 to 2 million pre 2011 to roughly 300,000 today. Open Doors has just elevated Syria from 18th to 6th on its World Watch...
Middle East
Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope in history, stood before tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square last month and declared that Jesus "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war." He called for an end to the conflict in Iran and warned against the weaponization of God's name...
US
The Trump administration delivered a series of major policy moves this week, targeting one of America's most prominent left wing advocacy groups, shifting federal drug policy, and extending critical ceasefires in the Middle East.
Middle East
On April 19, 2026, a photograph surfaced on social media showing an Israeli Defense Forces soldier striking a statue of Jesus Christ with the blunt side of an axe in the Christian village of Debel in southern Lebanon. A second soldier photographed the act.
US
Pope Leo XIV made headlines last month when he declared before thousands at St. Peter's Basilica that Jesus "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war." The statement, delivered during a prayer vigil for peace on April 11, came as the United States and Iran engaged in face to...
US
A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The Department of Justice alleges that from 2014 to 2023, the...
Middle East
Israel has appointed veteran diplomat George Deek as its first ever special envoy to the Christian world, marking a historic move to repair strained relations with Christian communities across the globe.