On April 21, 2019, Easter Sunday, around 270 people died in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as six suicide bombings hit several areas across the city, including three churches.
Today, in another church almost 5000 miles away in Rome, an Easter candle, shards of glass and other objects found after the attacks, are featured in a memorial dedicated to modern day martyrs across the world.
As the nation commemorates the fifth anniversary of this tragic event this coming Sunday, the Church in Sri Lanka wants to begin the process of investigating whether the victims can be recognized as martyrs and eventually blessed. Aleteia reports on how their memory is preserved in Rome.
“I see no difference between the Church’s first martyr St. Stephen and the victims of the Easter Sunday terrorist attack in Sri Lanka,” Monsignor Joe Neville Perera, the representative for Catholic Sri Lankans in Italy at the Italian Bishops’ Conference, told Aleteia. “Like St. Stephen, the blood of the victims was also shed out of love for Jesus Christ.”
“When a member of the faithful goes to church he goes towards the Lord and in the same way the victims, by going to church on Easter Day, did not deny their faith but rather gave their lives as a sacrifice in the name of faith; this is summed up in the word martyrdom.”
The witness of modern martyrs
At the Basilica of San Bartolomeo all’Isola (Saint Bartholomew on the Island), on the Tiber Island in the center of Rome, a memorial dedicated to modern martyrsfeatures several objects that were found on the floor of the destroyed churches in Colombo in the aftermath of the bombings.
The broken head and body of the statue of an angel, an Easter candle with 2019 written on it, shards of glass from the windows, a large rosary and a watch face, all bear witness to the destruction and violence that the faithful gathered to celebrate Easter witnessed on that Sunday.
“We don’t know to whom these objects belonged to but they talk to us about the faith of the Sri Lankan people, […] who were struck, helpless, while they were praying on Easter,” said Father Angelo Romano, rector of the Basilica of San Bartolomeo all’Isola.
“Violence against places of worship is the most hateful thing because it is violence against people who are not doing anything offensive against anyone, they are simply praying.”
