Church of St. Francis of Assisi on the harbour front of Aden in the 1960s
The Catholic Church in Yemen is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome.
Christians as a group make up 0.06% of Yemen’s population. Most of these are Orthodox Christians.
In 2020, there were four hundred Catholics in the country, which included one priest and eight nuns.[1] There are also approximately 2,500 Catholics who are temporary foreign workers or refugees.[2][3]
Three nuns who were members of the Missionaries of Charity were killed in Hodeida 1998.[5] In the same year, Yemen and the Vatican established diplomatic relations.[4] On 4 March 2016, terrorists of uncertain affiliation attacked a Catholic home for the elderly in Aden, killing sixteen people including four missionary sisters of the Missionaries of Charity and some local Muslim workers.
It is reported that at Christians and other religious minorities are often discriminated against when attempting to access humanitarian aid.[6]
