Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Hits Persecuted Christians

Since mid-May, an Ebola outbreak in East Africa has sickened over 2,000 people and killed more than 800, according to health authorities who fear the actual number of victims may be much higher. 

Most of the viral outbreak is unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country already facing widespread hunger, conflict, and militant violence in its eastern regions.

Doctors say most Ebola cases are centered in the Ituri and North Kivu provinces. Both of those regions have also been plagued by Islamist attacks on Christians, with violence that has grown worse over the last few years.

Now, militants are even attacking funeral processions for Ebola victims, and slowing down a humanitarian response already scrambling to keep up with the spread of the highly contagious virus.

Churches are also struggling to respond, even as they lose pastors and members of their own. 

Dr. Chikue Ihekweazu of the World Health Organization said the virus is spreading faster than medical professionals can track: “You have to imagine that this is a fire.”

FACING FIRES OF PERSECUTION 

Years before Ebola appeared in the DRC, another kind of fire was burning: An Islamist militant group calling itself the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) began a campaign of terror against non-Muslims along the Congo’s eastern border.

Though the majority of Congolese identify as Christians, ADF and other militant groups have made violent inroads in regions already suffering from political instability, civil wars, and widespread insecurity. The violence has only worsened.

In February 2025, ADF militants abducted civilians from Christian villages in North Kivu and killed dozens gathered at a Protestant church. A few months later, they conducted a major assault on a prayer meeting at a Catholic church, killing dozens of men, women, and children. In February of this year, militants killed 70 men, women, children, and elderly civilians in Christian villages. They even beheaded some of their victims. 

ADF claims to have killed 700 Christians since Christmas 2024. 

Last year, the European Parliament declared: “The systematic attacks on Christian communities in the region by armed groups such as the ADF and groups allied to the M23 constitute a serious human rights violation that requires immediate international attention.”

PRAYING FOR RELIEF

Now, the Ebola outbreak in the same region is finally drawing international attention. An American missionary doctor named Peter Stafford survived an Ebola infection in May, after contracting the virus in the Christian hospital he serves. 

Stafford thanked local doctors who helped him and his family evacuate, and said he plans to return to the country when he fully recovers. Meanwhile, many locals continue to fall to the virus, and a vaccine likely remains at least many months away.  

For now, physicians treat brutal symptoms, and believers pray bold prayers for God’s deliverance. Not only for the fires of Ebola, but for the fires they’ve long been enduring as followers of Christ.

–Pray for local and international medical professionals responding to the Ebola outbreak.

–Pray the virus won’t spread to surrounding countries.

–Pray for the sick, and for those suffering the loss of loved ones.

–Pray for churches to endure as they suffer themselves.

–Pray for Christians suffering under persecution as well, and ask the Lord to deliver his people.