Ethiopian Christians Go Underground to Celebrate Christmas

Worshipers clamor up the sides of the buried rock cutouts to take part in the ceremony.
ROME — It has been more than 30 years since that old rocker Bob Geldof launched the charity initiative Band Aid for famine in Ethiopia with the poignant tune, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Since then, it would seem from afar, Ethiopia has hovered on the edge of disaster, with the ever-present threat it could sink into another cataclysmic disaster or famine like that of the mid-1980s.

But celebrating Christmas in Ethiopia now resonates with concerns about a different kind of threat in this region where extremists are attacking anyone who does not follow a very narrowly defined notion of Islam.

Last July, Pope Francis called the persecution of Christians across North Africa and the Middle East a “true genocide” that must be stopped after 28 Ethiopian Christians were massacred in Libya by followers of the so-called Islamic State.Read more