Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa blesses the congregation at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on April 4, 2021. / Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
Rome Newsroom, Oct 12, 2023 / 06:45 am (CNA).
The Latin Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem has called for a day of prayer and fasting on Tuesday, Oct. 17 for peace and reconciliation in the Holy Land.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa has urged Catholics to organize times of prayer with Eucharistic adoration and recitation of the Rosary “to deliver to God the Father our thirst for peace, justice, and reconciliation.”
“In this time of sorrow and dismay, we do not want to remain helpless. We cannot let death and its sting (1 Cor 15:55) be the only word we hear,” he said in a statement issued on Oct. 11.
“That is why we feel the need to pray, to turn our hearts to God the Father. Only in this way we can draw the strength and serenity needed to endure these hard times, by turning to Him, in prayer and intercession, to implore and cry out to God amidst this anguish.”
Pizzaballa, who serves as the head of Latin Catholics living in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Cyprus, acknowledged that the war may inhibit many Catholics in the Holy Land from organizing large gatherings and encouraged “simple and sober common moments of prayer in parishes, religious communities, and families.”
In response, Catholics from around the world have also pledged on social media to join in the fast for peace in the Holy Land in solidarity, which falls on the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the first-century bishop and martyr from Syria.
After Hamas’ unprecedented multi-front attack on Israel killed 1,200 people, the Israeli government vowed retaliation and launched airstrikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing 900 people according to Gaza officials.
Some 130 Israeli hostages were taken by the militant Islamist group, who have threatened to kill one hostage every time that Israel’s military bombs civilian targets in Gaza without warning.
“The pain and dismay at what is happening is great. Once again we find ourselves in the midst of a political and military crisis. We have suddenly been catapulted into a sea of unprecedented violence,” Pizzaballa said.
“The hatred, which we have unfortunately already been experiencing for too long, will increase even more, and the ensuing spiral of violence will create more destruction. Everything seems to speak of death.”
The cardinal, who arrived back in Jerusalem on the night of Oct. 10 after being in Italy for the consistory, said that he returned to find “a country that has changed a great deal and very quickly.”
“I fear it will be a very long war,” Pizzaballa said in an interview with Vatican News on Oct. 11, noting the possibility of an Israeli ground operation in Gaza.
He said that Christians in Gaza have taken shelter in the Catholic parish and school grounds in the hope that these buildings will not be targeted.
“As long as the Palestinian issue, the freedom, dignity, and future of the Palestinians are not taken into account in the ways that are necessary today, prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine will be increasingly difficult,” the cardinal said.
“The international community must start looking again at the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian issue with more attention than it has shown so far. And it must work hard to calm the situation, to bring the parties to reasonableness through mediations that are not necessarily public, because public ones will never work,” he added.
“We need support, to condemn all forms of violence, to isolate the violent, and to work relentlessly for a ceasefire. Because as long as weapons speak, it will not be possible to hear other voices.”
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A photo of Deborah Emmanuel’s photo on her Facebook page. Emmanuel, a Christian student in Nigeria, was killed by an Islamic mob on her college campus on May 12, 2022. / CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 23, 2022 / 14:01 pm (CNA).
Deborah Emmanuel, the Nigerian Christian student who was murdered by a Muslim mob last month, spent her final hours with a close friend who has shared exclusive details of the brutal killing with CNA.
CNA is using the pseudonym “Mary” for the woman’s protection. A Christian herself, she nearly was killed by the same mob.
Significantly, Mary’s account contradicts the claim of authorities that they attempted to rescue Emmanuel from the mob but were “overwhelmed.”
On the contrary, the police “could have stopped the murder if they had really tried,” Mary told CNA.
Emmanuel’s so-called “blasphemy murder” took place on May 12 on the campus of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, Sokoto State, a major city located in the northwest corner of Nigeria. The city is home to the Muslim Sultan who serves as the top religious authority for Nigeria’s 100 million Muslim believers.
Prior to the attack, Emmanuel, a home economics major who attended Evangelical Church Winning All, was bullied by fanatical Muslim students at the teacher’s college for audio statements she made on WhatsApp, a messaging platform. She credited Jesus Christ for her success on a recent exam, and when threatened and told to apologize she refused, invoking the Holy Spirit, saying “Holy Ghost fire! Nothing will happen to me,” according to WhatsApp messages reviewed by CNA.
In the aftermath of these heated exchanges, a Muslim mob attacked Emmanuel on the college’s campus. After an hours’ long siege, the mob beat and stoned her to death, then set her body on fire with burning tires, according to graphic video footage posted online. The rioters also rampaged in a Catholic Church compound in Sokoto, according to reports. The riots spread to other Christian-owned properties over two days.
A relative of Emmanuel’s, who said he was standing approximately 60 feet from the mob, also told CNA he believes the police could have saved her. He, too, asked that his identity be withheld for his safety.
Unarmed campus security personnel made a futile attempt to rescue Emmanuel, according to a campus security report shared with CNA. But Emmanuel’s relative said there were dozens of armed police officers on the scene who didn’t fire their weapons.
The commissioner of police in the state also said officers did not fire their weapons. However, he maintained that only 15 of his officers were at the scene, according to a report in The Epoch Times.
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Diocese of Sokoto has strongly condemned the attack and called on Emmanuel’s killers to be brought to justice..
“This matter must be treated as a criminal act,” he said. You can read his full statement here.
A plea for help
On the day of Emmanuel’s death, Mary received a frantic phone call from her around 9 a.m, asking for help. By that time, women who lived in her dormitory had begun slapping Emmanuel, Mary told CNA.
Mary arrived at the campus to see her friend surrounded by a mob and being led by a campus staffer to a gatehouse building for her protection. The Muslim students had bloodied her face and head with blows from rods and were joined by male students who believed their duty was to execute a blasphemer on the spot, Mary said.
“Allahu Akbar!” meaning “God is Great” was bellowed for hours, she said.
Mary initially stayed outside the building and tried to intercede for her friend, but she said it wasn’t long before the mob turned on her, too. Within moments Mary was trying to ward off punches and blows from sticks as she backed away from the gatehouse and toward the gate of the college 40 feet away.
Mary said a college lecturer rescued her and brought her to join Emmanuel inside the gatehouse by 10 a.m.
At 10:25 a.m., the relative said, six officers of the Department of State Security (DSS) — the equivalent to the FBI in the U.S. — arrived, firing their rifles in the air but with no effect. Five minutes later, he said, a group of Sokoto police came on the scene and fired tear gas, temporarily scattering the mob.
The above map is based on eyewitness accounts of the murder of Nigerian Christian student Deborah Emmanuel on her college’s campus on May 12, 2022. Graphic by Alexander Hunter
For about 10 minutes police had an opportunity to disperse the mob and force their way to the gatehouse to extract Mary and Emmanuel, Emmanuel’s relative believes. But that did not happen.
By 11 a.m., the mob had returned to the building, holding cloths against their faces to ward off the tear gas. The mob tried hurling stones at Mary through the windows of the locked gatehouse, but Mary barricaded herself behind a table.
The mob then threw gasoline on the women through the front windows and attempted to burn them alive, Mary said.
“Deborah was soaked with gasoline, but when lighted plastic was pitched in through the windows, I quickly stamped the flames out,” Mary said.
No escape
All of this transpired as police and DSS officers watched from a safe distance, according to Emmanuel’s relative.
The traumatized women said little to each other, but Emmanuel was still hoping to do her examination that day, Mary said. At one point, she recalled, Emmanuel asked, “What time is it? I have an examination at noon.” Mary said she looked at her cell phone and told her it was 1 p.m.
After another excruciating hour of siege, the mob pushed down a single Sokoto policeman guarding the door, broke the padlock on the door, and rushed in to find Mary and Emmanuel hiding behind furniture, Mary and the relative related. Two rioters placed a chain around Mary’s neck and pulled it hard, trying to strangle her, she recounted.
“Let this girl go! She is not an offender,” Mary recalled one of the rioters shouting. But as they released her, a young man in the mob grabbed Emmanuel and took her to the front steps of the gatehouse. There she was bludgeoned with steel pipes and wooden rods and stoned, the relative said.
Two DSS officers attempted to rescue Emmanuel but were hit by stones and pushed aside, the relative said. The police officers remained in position and did not come to her aid, he alleged.
Mary collapsed inside the gatehouse gasping from the strangulation. Approximately 40 minutes later, she said, she was roused by one of the mob to leave the building, which was on fire.
As she walked through the smoke, Mary saw the gatehouse burning and Emmanuel’s lifeless body in flames.
The face of Christian persecution
In the aftermath of Emmanuel’s murder, human rights advocates and others have leveled sharp criticism at Nigeria’s government leaders for not doing enough to stem the rising tide of violence directed at Christians and other non-Muslims.
Relatives of Deborah Emmanuel at her burial in Niger State, Nigeria. Courtesy of the Emmanuel family
Anti-Christian hatred was evident in days of rioting in Sokoto following the arrest of two suspects in Emmanuel’s murder. The rioters reportedly were incensed that there were any arrests at all.
“Deborah Emmanuel, like kidnapping victim Leah Sharibu (who was enslaved by Boko Haram insurgents in 2019), has become the face of Christian persecution in Nigeria,” said Kyle Abts, executive director of the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON). “There has not been an official report from the security forces on the lynching of Ms. Emmanuel. Her killing and subsequent riots show clear government complicity and coverup.”
Tina Ramirez, founder of the international nonprofit Hardwired Global, also believes the Nigerian government has been unwilling to take a strong stand against blasphemy killings.
“The recent attacks on students are reminiscent of the attacks at Nigerian colleges two decades ago that were the precursor to the growth of extremist groups across Nigeria’s North and Middle Belt,” Ramirez wrote in a text to CNA.
CNA Staff, Mar 6, 2021 / 02:10 pm (CNA).- Iraq’s prime minister on Saturday declared March 6 a National Day of Tolerance and Coexistence in honor of Pope Francis’ landmark meeting with the country’s top Shiite cleric.
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