Nuncio in Baghdad: mosque massacre, a tragedy for Catholics and Muslims
"It cannot be thought of as an act of civil war," Msgr Ferdinando Filoni tells AsiaNews, "How terrible, though, that an event of public religious expression has become a drama for everyone." The Catholic community is "close to those who suffer with their solidarity and prayers."
Baghdad (AsiaNews) News of the massacre that resulted from people fleeing Shi'ite mosque of Al Kazimiyah has caused "a sense of shock" for the Catholics of Baghdad, who are spiritually united with the families of victims and all those who suffer. Monsignor Ferdinando Filoni, Apostolic Nuncio in Iraq, tolds AsiaNews that Iraqi Catholics extend "all our solidarity to the families of victims and all those who suffer, as well as our prayers, as a way to be spiritually close to these people."
For the Vatican nuncio, the massacre, with resulted from the unfounded news that 2 kamikazes were about to blow themselves up in the Muslim shrine, "cannot be defined as an act of civil war, even if a drama of this kind could not have been foreseen." "At the most," the prelate says, "some kind of disturbance could have been expected, as has already been the case in other religious occasions involving mass pilgrimages."
"How terrible that an event of public religious expression has been become such a drama for everyone," Msgr Filoni says, "since this was to have been one of the first events with which the Shi'ites were to have expressed their religious freedom after years of having been oppressed in the expression of their religiosity." The nuncio recalls having seen "women and youngsters who had been joyously pouring by all night and throughout the morning even here, in front of the Nunciature, on their way to the Al Kazimiyah Mosque, for their religious celebration."
The nuncio does not harbour immediate hopes over the recently announced draft constitution as a possible instrument of peace among various Iraqi groups. "One cannot think," he said, "that what was up until yesterday a stumbling block can become an instrument of peaceful coexistence. Problems and contradictions existed and will be brought forward."
The solution to the problem will perhaps be "in the understanding that people have of this document. Newspapers began only today publishing the draft and people still need to form a complete opinion which could eventually become consensus for a referendum."
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18/01/2005
