KILLING IN GOD’S NAME IS
SATANIC – POPE
P
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ope Francis on Wednesday denounced
killing in God’s name as “satanic” as he held a mass to honour Jacques Hamel,
the French priest whose throat was slit by jihadists in July.
“Killing in God’s name is satanic,”
he said in his address which was attended by around 80 pilgrims from the
northern French diocese of Rouen where the attack took place.
“He was a martyr,” he said of Hamel,
describing him as a “good, gentle man” who had been killed “like a criminal.
“How good it would be if all religious confessions declared that killing in the
name of God was satanic.”
The
elderly priest was killed on July 26 while presiding over an early morning mass
for a handful of parishioners in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
The pope’s
early service on Wednesday was held in the chapel at St Martha’s, the boarding
house where Francis stays and where a photo of the late priest was set upon the
altar.
“Today the
Church has more Christian martyrs than in the first centuries,” he said in his
sermon which was delivered in Italian but translated into French for the
visitors. Christians were currently suffering persecution through being
“imprisoned, tortured and killed because they refuse to deny Jesus,” he said.
Earlier this month, Francis met with French President Francois Hollande over the attack, and on September 24, he will meet relatives of the 86 people killed in a jihadist truck attack in the Riviera resort of Nice on July 14. Read more
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