Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Vatican: 100,000 Christians Are Killed Each Year; Tells UN It's Concerned with Rel. Freedom Crimes

More than 100,000 people around the world are killed each year because they are Christians, the Independent Catholic News website reports today (May 29, 2013).

Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi -- Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations -- said the Holy See is deeply concerned over violations of religious freedom and systematic attacks on Christian communities in regions of the world such as Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Speaking during the 23rd Session of the Human Rights Council Interactive Dialogue with High Commissioner in Geneva on May 27, Archbishop Tomasi said, "The serious violations of the right to freedom of religion in general and the recent continuing discrimination and systematic attacks inflicted on some Christian communities in particular, deeply concern the Holy See and many democratic governments whose population embrace various religious and cultural traditions."

He added, "Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year. Other Christians and other believers are subjected to forced displacement, to the destruction of their places of worship, to rape and to the abduction of their leaders -- as it recently happened in the case of Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji, in Aleppo (Syria)." These two Orthodox Christian bishops are still in the hands of anti-Christian kidnappers.

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