UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has strongly condemned the attacks targeting Christian churches in Nigeria and called for an end to violence there.
Bomb attacks on churches during Christmas services and a suicide blast killed at least 40 people in Nigeria in violence claimed by Islamists.
A purported spokesman for Islamist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the bombing of the church outside the Nigerian capital and other attacks.
Islamist militants set off bombs across Nigeria on Christmas Day - three targeting churches including one that killed at least 27 people - raising fears that they are trying to ignite sectarian civil war.
The Boko Haram Islamist sect, who aims to impose sharia law across the country, claimed responsibility for the three church bombs.
This is the second Christmas in a row the group has caused mass carnage with deadly bombings of churches.
Security forces also blamed the sect for two other blasts in the north.
St Theresa's Catholic Church in Madala, a satellite town about 40km from the centre of the capital Abuja, was packed when the bomb exploded just outside.
Hours after the first bomb, blasts were reported at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church in the central, ethnically and religiously mixed town of Jos, and at a church in northern Yobe state at the town of Gadaka.
A suicide bomber killed four security officials at the State Security Service in one of the other bombs, which struck the northeastern town of Damaturu, police said. Residents heard two loud explosions and gunfire in the town.
A Reuters reporter at the church near Abuja saw the front roof had been destroyed, as had several houses nearby. Five burnt out cars were still smouldering. There were scenes of chaos, as shocked residents stared at the wreckage in disbelief.
Police cordoned off the area around the church. Thousands of furious youths set up burning road blocks on the highway from Abuja leading to Nigeria's largely Muslim north.
Elsewhere, Pope Benedict condemned the Christmas Day bomb attacks by Islamist militants in Nigeria as an "absurd gesture" and prayed that "the hands of the violent be stopped".
