Lahore archbishop: churches were guarded, but attack on park unexpected

March 30, 2016

The archbishop of Lahore, the site of an Easter Sunday terrorist attack that targeted Christians in a park, said that “the government had provided all the necessary security measures to protect the churches-- but no one had thought about the park.”

“I visited every bedside and every victim, of whatever faith,” Archbishop Sebastian Francis Shaw told Aid to the Church in Need. “It was truly difficult, because I saw so many children, only four or five years old, both Christians and Muslims, who had been wounded or killed by this terrible attack.”

“To my own faithful, I said that they must not give up hope because, even though we were going through a period of grave difficulties, we have to learn to rise up again, just as Christ was able to raise himself again, despite carrying the Cross,” he added. “And so we too, while carrying our own cross, have to be able to get up again and move forward. Because God is and will always be with us.”

 

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Further information:

• Lahore prelate comforts victims of Pakistan terror attack (Aid to the Church in Need)
• At least 70 dead in attack on Christians in Pakistan; Pope decries massacre (CWN, 3/28)