Pope Francis has once again called for prayer for goodness and fraternity after the "terrible acts of violence" over the weekend in Munich, Ansbach and Reutlingen, in Germany, and Kabul, in Afghanistan over the weekend that saw the deaths of at least 90 people and injuries to several hundred more.
“At this time our soul is once again moved by sad news related to deplorable acts of terrorism and of violence, which have caused sorrow and death,” the Pope said. “I think of the dramatic events in Munich in Germany, and in Kabul in Afghanistan, where many innocent people lost their lives.” He assured the family and friends of the victims of his spiritual closeness to them.
On Friday night a German-Iranian schoolboy Ali David Sonboly, 18, shot dead nine people and injured 35 people after going on a shooting rampage in a district of Munich, in Germany. On Sunday, in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, a failed Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up with a bomb in his backpack and injured 12 others - three serious - outside a bar after being refused admittance to a music festival.
On Saturday 80 Hazaras - a tribe of Mongolian descendants who are mainly Shia Muslims - were killed by a suicide bombing by Islamic State in the Afghan capital of Kabul. And on Sunday, a pregnant Polish woman was killed in a machete attack by a Syrian refugee in the city of Reutlingen, south of Stuttgart.
The Holy Father also called on people to join him in prayer “that the Lord might inspire in everyone intentions of goodness and fraternity.” The more “difficulties might seem insurmountable, and prospects of security and peace seem obscure,” he said, “the more insistent must our prayer be.”
Earlier in the weekend, Pope Francis sent a telegram to Cardinal Reinhard Marx Archbishop of Munich and Freising to express his condolences after a schoolboy had gone on a shooting spree in the Bavarian city.
"Pope Francis has noted with consternation the news of the terrible act of violence which occurred in Munich, in which several persons, mostly young people, were killed, and many others were gravely wounded," the telegram said.
"His Holiness shares in the pain of the survivors and expresses to them his closeness in suffering. He entrusts the departed in prayer to the mercy of God. He expresses his deep sympathy to all those who were wounded in this attack, and thanks the rescue service personnel and the security forces for their attentive and generous service. Pope Francis beseeches Christ, the Lord of Life, to give comfort and consolation to all, and imparts his Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of hope."
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