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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

CHURCH / Egypt: bishop criticizes Muslim Brotherhood following attack on church

Egypt: bishop criticizes Muslim Brotherhood following attack on church

CWN - October 22, 2013


A Latin-rite Catholic bishop in Egypt has criticized the Muslim Brotherhood following an October 20 attack on a Coptic Orthodox church in a Cairo suburb. The death toll in the attack has risen to four.

Bishop Adel Zaky, a Franciscan who serves as the vicar apostolic of Alexandria, said that the condolences expressed by the Muslim Brotherhood are "a tactic already used by them on other occasions: they express their solidarity to the victims, and then what emerges is that the architects of the terrorist attacks are people related to them."

"Their goal is to cause chaos and then lay responsibility to the weakness of the government and the army that do not guarantee safety," he continued. "The truth is manipulated to divide, and in this I see the work of the devil. They want to divide Christians and Muslims who together brought the downfall of Morsi's Islamic regime."

President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, was removed from office by the Egyptian military in July following large protests – leading to widespread anti-Christian violence by Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

"The bombings and attacks against Christians have now come to the capital," Bishop Zaky added. "May the Lord save us."

In its brief coverage of the incident, L'Osservatore Romano emphasized that the prime minister of Egypt, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, and the Grand Mufti of Egypt all condemned the attack.