CWN - August 19, 2013
Following four days of violence against Christian institutions in
Egypt, “nearly 40 churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others
have been attacked and heavily damaged,” the Associated Press reported.
Earlier, the press office of the Catholic Church in Egypt had released a
list of 58 Christian institutions, 14 of them Catholic, that had
suffered attacks.
The Islamist attacks on Christian targets followed police and military
action against Muslim Brotherhood protestors, who support ousted
President Mohamed Morsi.
Father Rafic Greiche, the spokesman for the Egyptian Catholic bishops'
conference, remarked to the Fides news service that the attacks on
Christian targets occurred mostly in areas where Islamic militants are
strongest. "This is not a civil war between Christians and Muslims," he
said. "It is not a civil war but a war against terrorism."
In its wire story, the Associated Press offered extensive coverage of an
attack on a Franciscan school in Beni Suef, a city of 230,000 in
north-central Egypt.
“We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us,” said Sister
Manal, the school’s principal. “At the end, they paraded us like
prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to
another without telling us where they were taking us.”
A Muslim woman who formerly worked at the school “offered to take us in
and said she can protect us since her son-in-law was a policeman,” she
continued. “We accepted her offer.”
Sister Manal added that she saw two female employees of the school being
sexually assaulted as they made their way through the crowd.
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