Pope Francis on Thursday appealed to Somali Islamist militants who killed 148 people at a Kenyan university last month to stop their brutality and “come to their senses”.
He told Kenyan bishops visiting the Vatican that he prayed for those killed by acts of terror, ethnic and tribal hostilities in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.
“I think most especially of the men and women killed at Garissa University College on Good Friday,” the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics said.
“May those who commit such brutality come to their senses and seek mercy.”
The gunmen hunted down Christians while sparing Muslims in that attack. Francis has repeatedly expressed alarm about Christians being targeted for their faith and condemned the beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya in February.
He urged the visiting bishops to work with Christian and non-Christian leaders to promote peace in predominantly-Christian Kenya.
Al Shabaab said Garissa was revenge for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight alongside
African Union peacekeepers against the Islamist group.
Gunmen Were Kenyans: Report
All four gunmen from Somalia’s Al-Qaeda linked Shebab who carried out the Kenyan university massacre earlier this month were Kenyans themselves, reports said on Thursday. The militants attacked the university in the northeastern town of Garissa on April 2, lining up non-Muslim students for execution and killing 148 people in what President Uhuru Kenyatta described as a “barbaric medieval slaughter”. One of the four gunmen killed by Kenyan special forces who ended the day-long siege has already been named as Abdirahim Abdullahi, an ethnic Somali Kenyan national who was top student.
He told Kenyan bishops visiting the Vatican that he prayed for those killed by acts of terror, ethnic and tribal hostilities in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.
“I think most especially of the men and women killed at Garissa University College on Good Friday,” the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics said.
“May those who commit such brutality come to their senses and seek mercy.”
The gunmen hunted down Christians while sparing Muslims in that attack. Francis has repeatedly expressed alarm about Christians being targeted for their faith and condemned the beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya in February.
He urged the visiting bishops to work with Christian and non-Christian leaders to promote peace in predominantly-Christian Kenya.
Al Shabaab said Garissa was revenge for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight alongside
African Union peacekeepers against the Islamist group.
Gunmen Were Kenyans: Report
All four gunmen from Somalia’s Al-Qaeda linked Shebab who carried out the Kenyan university massacre earlier this month were Kenyans themselves, reports said on Thursday. The militants attacked the university in the northeastern town of Garissa on April 2, lining up non-Muslim students for execution and killing 148 people in what President Uhuru Kenyatta described as a “barbaric medieval slaughter”. One of the four gunmen killed by Kenyan special forces who ended the day-long siege has already been named as Abdirahim Abdullahi, an ethnic Somali Kenyan national who was top student.