exclamation

Important notice: To continue serving our valued readers during the postal disruption, complete unrestricted access to the digital edition is available at no extra cost. This will ensure uninterrupted digital access to your copies. Click here to view the digital edition, or learn more.

A boy who was injured in a suicide bomb attack at a public park in Lahore, Pakistan, on Easter, rests in his bed March 28 at a hospital in the city. Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore visited young victims at a hospital and described his experience as "truly difficult." CNS photo/Omer Saleem, EPA

Archbishop finds visiting children injured in Pakistan bombing ‘truly difficult’

By  Simon Caldwell, Catholic News Service
  • March 30, 2016

MANCHESTER, England - Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore, Pakistan, said he was grief stricken while visiting hospitalized child victims of an Easter bomb attack in a city park.

Speaking with the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need March 29, the archbishop said that seeing severely injured children, some as young as four, was "truly difficult."

The children were among 340 people injured by a suicide bomber. At least 72 people died, including 29 children, in the March 27 attack in which a splinter group of the Taliban specifically targeted Christian families celebrating Easter, authorities said.

Shaw described how he went from bed to bed listening to accounts of the attack from the victims and their families, according to a statement from the charity.

"I visited every bedside and every victim, of whatever faith. 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," Shaw said.

He said that besides Christian and Muslim families, other non-Christians were in the park at the time of the attack as well.

"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.

The archbishop noted that security had been tightened around churches in Lahore, which had been the targets of terrorist attacks on Easter in 2015.
Police, he said, did not consider that the park might be a potential target of the terror groups.

"After the attacks last year on two Christian churches in Youhanabad, we were fearful that there might be another attack, and for this reason the government had provided all the necessary security measures to protect the churches, but no one had thought about the park," he explained.

Peter Jacob, former director of the Pakistan Justice and Peace Commission, told Aid to the Church in Need that the attacker detonated the bomb when the park was at its busiest, with about 3,000 people there at the time.

Meanwhile, Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, said in a March 28 statement that the attack offered more evidence of a campaign of genocide against Christians in Pakistan.

"Pakistan is not safe for Christians as there is a genocide taking place there. Not a genocide that is state-sponsored in its entirety but a genocide nevertheless," he said while calling on world governments to respond to the attacks so that the Christian death toll does not continue to mount.

Please support The Catholic Register

Unlike many media companies, The Catholic Register has never charged readers for access to the news and information on our website. We want to keep our award-winning journalism as widely available as possible. But we need your help.

For more than 125 years, The Register has been a trusted source of faith-based journalism. By making even a small donation you help ensure our future as an important voice in the Catholic Church. If you support the mission of Catholic journalism, please donate today. Thank you.

DONATE