Tag: Church

Apparent hate crime in Melbourne ‘church’ against Indian priest

#hatecrime #crime #religion #India #Australia #church

A 72-year old, Indian Catholic priest was attacked while leading the Sunday mass in a Melbourne church. The priest was stabbed in the neck just moments before he was about to say the 11a.m. mass at the church.

It is believed that the offender, Rev Tomy Kalathoor Mathew (48), told the priest that because he was Indian, he must be a hindu or a muslim and therefore can’t be saying mass.

Currently, the priest is recovering from a non life-threatening injury.

Read the full article here.

ISIS bombs Church in Egypt, warns more to come

On Sunday, a peaceful Coptic cathedral in Cairo was struck by a bomb blast that killed 25 people. The Islamic state said that it had sent a suicide bomber to the chapel on the grounds of St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox cathedral. This was the deadliest militant attack on Egyptian civilians in years.

The ISIS/ISIL identified the bomber as Abu Abdallah al-Masri. However the egyptian authorities identified the attacker as Mahmoud Shafik Mohamed Mostafa. There was no explanation given for the discrepancy. Mr. Mostafa’s family said that he was jailed and released in 2014, and that was the time when they lost contact with him. It was inferred that he was tortured in jail, which may have led to his radicalization.

The ISIS also suggested that it was prepared to single out Egyptian Christians much as it did minority Shiites in countries like Iraq and Syria. This poses a new challenge for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is already confronting the problem of economic crisis. Read the full article here.