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Christianity is a minority religion in Somalia, with around 1,000 practitioners in a population of over eight million inhabitants.[1][2] Most Christians in Somalia come from the Bantu minority ethnic group,[3] and belong to the Evangelical and Wesleyan Church of the Nazarene. There is one Catholic diocese for the whole country, the Diocese of Mogadishu.
The Diocese of Mogadishu estimates that there were about 100 Roman Catholic practitioners in Somalia in 2004, down from 8,500 practitioners in 1950.[4] 37 years earlier in 1913, during the early part of the colonial era, there were virtually no Christians in the Somali territories, with about 100–200 followers coming from the schools and orphanages of the few Catholic missions in the British Somaliland protectorate.[5] There were also no known Catholic missions in Italian Somaliland during the same period.[6]
According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, the Anglican Church, the Somalia Believers Fellowship, the Somalia Mennonite Mission and the Seventh-day Adventists are present in this country.[7] The Episcopal Diocese of Egypt in Cairo also reportedly has jurisdiction over parishes in North Africa and the Horn of Africa.[8] The Adventist Mission indicates that there are no Adventist members in Somalia, and that Christianity in general has seen little growth.[9]
Due to the ongoing civil war in the southern part of the country, professing Christians in Somalia face persecution and sometimes death. There are no church buildings in the country nor any legal protection for Christians, some of whom meet in underground churches.[1] Paramilitary groups in Somalia have engaged in widespread looting of Christian graves,[10] in addition to the desecration of Sufi Muslim graves and mosques.[11] Sometimes the term "Christian" is a label that the jihadists affix on people they suspect of working for Ethiopian intelligence.[1]
In August 2009, International Christian Concern reported that four Christians working to help orphans in Somalia were beheaded by Islamist extremists when they refused to convert to Islam.[12]
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