VATICAN MEGALOPOLIS – Iraqi Christians famed a somber Christmas in a Baghdad cathedral stained with dried blood, while Pope Benedict XVI exhorted Chinese Catholics to stand unswerving in the face restrictions on them in a respite greet laced with sweat bullets for the cosmos's Christian minorities.

Saturday's grim dispatch seemed to highlight the pope's responsibility payment his gang's welfare.

In northern Nigeria, attacks on two churches near Muslim school of thought members claimed six lives, while bombings in primary Nigeria, a division plagued by Christian-Muslim violence, killed 32 people, officials said.

Eleven people including a churchman were garaże injured before a bombing during Christmas Convene in a enforce chapel in the Philippines, which has the largest Catholic residents in Asia. The abuse took district on Jolo islet, a fastness of al-Qaida linked militants.