Two years ago, bulldozers flattened the church building where Matvey and his wife went. Now, the field where the church once stood lays empty on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus.

Growing up as a Christian, I was led to believe that if I accepted Christ and became a born-again Christian, my life would be filled with happiness. Then, I realised that I was wrong.

This week, it was 80 years ago that Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated from the Nazis. This concentration camp scarred the lives of an uncountable number of people. But now, people are forgetting about it.

As Dutch envoy of religious freedom, Bea ten Tusscher gratefully uses the Open Doors’ World Watch list that ranks persecution of Christians. “It makes persecution visible”, she says. “Although the underlying stories are often more complex.”

In 2023, an Islamic terrorist in the southern Spanish city of Algeciras murdered an altar server and injured four other people with a machete while shouting, "Death to Christians" and "Allah is great."