By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) on April 10 expressed deep pain and concern over the bombings in two churches in Egypt.
At least 48 people were killed in the twin Palm Sunday church bombings at Tanta and Alexandria, two cities in the Nile Delta region.
A press note from CBCI secretary general Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas said the conference “strongly condemns the deadly” attacks.
The first bombing at St. George’s Church in Tanta city claimed around 27 lives. Emergency services had barely reached the site when another blast killed 11 people at St. Mark’s Church in Alexandria, some 130 km northwest of Tanta.
Coptic Pope Tawadros II led the Palm Sunday service in the church just before the blast.
Terming such acts as “inhuman” and intolerable, Bishop Mascarenhas welcomed the Egyptian government’s decision to declare a three-month emergency in the country. He also expressed the hope that “the perpetrators” of those “brutal inhuman acts will be traced and punished.”
The CBCI official said the Indian Catholic Church shares Pope Francis’ “profound grief” over the attacks in Egypt. The Pilar prelate said the Indian bishops conveyed to the head of the Coptic Church and his followers their “deep condolences” and solidarity and offered prayers “in this time of great sorrow and distress.”
He said the Catholic Church in India condemns all forms of violence and “all cowardly terrorist activities against innocents” wherever and in whatever form they take place.
Earlier, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the bomb attacks and expressed his anguish over the loss of lives. “We condemn these attacks. My thoughts are with families of the deceased & prayers with the injured,” the premier tweeted April 9 night.