KONTAGORA, Nigeria - Dressed in holiday finery, 500 Nigerian Catholics gathered on Palm Sunday last year at St. Michael's Cathedral, the central church in a traditionally Islamic corner of Africa's most populous nation.

In much of the world, Catholics commemorate Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem with a public parade. But in Kontagora, the faithful confined their procession inside the compound's 10-foot walls out of respect for - or fear of - the city's Muslim majority.

"We don't want to do anything to provoke the people," said the Rev. Isa Emmanuel Saliu, a local priest.

There was good reason to be wary about public exhibitions of Christian faith. Kontagora is a principal city in Niger state, one of several Nigerian jurisdictions in which Islamic law has been decreed. In a country where Christianity and Islam meet like great tectonic plates, Kontagora lies directly on the fault line.

Occasionally the tension erupts, as it did a little more than three months ago amid worldwide protests over cartoons depicting Muhammad.

On Feb. 23, Muslim gangs forced their way through St. Michael's steel gates. Igniting tires and gasoline, they burned the cathedral and destroyed the priests' residence. One parishioner fled to a nearby Protestant church, where he died when it was burned. Nine churches were attacked in Kontagora that night, and 10 people killed.

The bloody week in Nigeria - more than 120 Christians and Muslims died in protests, reprisals and counter-reprisals - is only a sample of the sectarian conflict that underlies this oil-rich nation of 132 million, cobbled together by British colonialists from rival ethnic groups and perpetually in danger of splitting apart.

Despite its instability, Nigeria and much of Africa represent a growth opportunity for major religions because a substantial number of people still are animists, with ancient tribal beliefs in spirits and demons. Not only Roman Catholicism but most Protestant denominations are here, aggressively vying for Nigeria's unclaimed souls. Islamic radicals have also taken aim at the country; Osama bin Laden declared it "ripe for liberation."

For the Catholic Church, which is losing ground in Europe and Latin America, Africa is the promising frontier.

In 1950, 4 percent of Catholics worldwide were Africans. Today, the continent's 140 million members comprise 12 percent.

In Nigeria, which dominates West Africa economically and politically, the church is growing at 4.7 percent per year, one of the fastest rates in the world.

Catholicism isn't the only religion flourishing here. The Anglicans claim 19 million Nigerian members, about the same as the Catholics. In the southern lowlands, where most Christians live, roadsides are cluttered with formal and informal houses of worship, including many new Pentecostal churches.

Business owners openly proclaim their faith: Divine Grace Filling Station, Love of God Photos & Video Studio.

"It's almost like a miracle of grace," said Archbishop John Onaiyekan, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria and head of the Archdiocese of Abuja, the capital.

Although Catholic clerics say their evangelistic efforts in Nigeria's hinterlands are aimed at animists, in truth many converts are Muslims. Partly for self-protection, the clerics do not advertise Islamic conversions. Where sharia law is enforced, Muslims face reprisals and even death for leaving the faith.

But it's clear that Christians measure their progress in comparison to Islam, which migrated across the Sahara in the Middle Ages and set deep roots in what is now northern Nigeria.

"Islam had been here for over 1,000 years," said Onaiyekan. "Christianity came here in the last 100 years. Now Islam and Christians are about equal" - 66 million and 53 million, as estimated by the CIA.

A Nigerian Islamic leader said Christianity is compatible with Islam, as long as followers of the former do not insult Islam or Muhammad.

"We don't have a religious crisis in Nigeria," said Amin Igwegbe, director of administration for the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs of Nigeria, and a convert from Catholicism at age 12. "What we have is a political crisis, an ethnic crisis, and a tribal crisis. Politicians just use religion as a cover-up.

"The real problem here is poverty. A hungry man is an angry man, whether he is Christian or Muslim."