It was a home founded by Mother Teresa for the elderly and infirm, and Friday, it became the frontline of the growing, global assault against Christians. When the jihadists arrived at the gate of the facility in Aden, Yemen they claimed to be coming to visit their elderly parents.
Then they revealed their true intentions as they methodically captured, handcuffed and executed sixteen people, including four nuns who had dedicated their lives to serving as Missionaries of Charity.
Read this slowly, so it sinks in: Four NUNS were handcuffed before they were shot in the head, for their Christianity alone.
We are now living in a world where Mother Teresa herself would have to fear for her life.
Yet, in the United States of America our State Department and White House remain hesitant to officially declare there is an attempt at genocide against Christians in the Middle East.
This is despite the fact that all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have now admitted it is a genocide, and more than 200 members of congress have cosponsored a house resolution to declare it one.
Even the European Parliament has officially issued a genocide declaration. So, now, the State Department and the White House are officially to the left of Europe on this issue, and totally unwilling to listen to any members of any political party in this country.
This is truly alarming, as the Rev. Samuel Rodriquez has noted, "inaction is action, silence is complicity."
Thankfully, a growing coalition of evangelical and catholic leaders have launched a series of initiatives to force the Obama administration to do more including a growing petition created by the Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians and now signed by some of the most influential Christian leaders in America, and an international advocacy campaign where people everywhere are declaring #WeStandWithThem.
Today, at the National Press Club, a group of Middle Eastern Christian leaders and human rights advocates briefed the media presenting "encyclopedic evidence" that there is indeed an attempt at Christian Genocide. Additionally, today, the General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, Bishop Angaelos, addressed the annual Washington, D.C. board meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals on the same subject.
There is, as Pope Francis has noted, a growing "ecumenism of blood" -- for Christians are dying everyday.
The fact is that slow response of global leaders to this crisis has made it worse, and has empowered bad actors to do more harm. Now, Christians – and other religious minorities – are facing a once-in-a-thousand-year crisis.
Christian persecution has gone viral. The brutality and scale is astonishing with one advocacy group noting that their research made 2015 the worst year for Christian persecution in all of Christian history.
Christians now face some form of persecution in more than 100 countries – that represents 75 percent of the world's total Christian population – in Iraqi and Syria alone Christians more than 2 million Christians have been displaced (or killed) in a matter of a few years.
What will we tell our children when they ask us what we did to stop this global massacre?
Johnnie Moore is an author, humanitarian, former senior vice president of Liberty University, and the president of the KAIROS Company, TheKCompany.co, a public relations and consulting firm.