In a grisly coincidence, shortly after the British prime minister had referred in her Easter message to the persecution of Christians worldwide, bomb explosions in Sri Lanka killed more than 300 people and injured many more attending Easter services. The terrorists, believed to be a shadowy Islamist group, also targeted hotels and other facilities. There is no doubt that Catholics, a small minority in a mainly Buddhist country, were the intended victims of this appalling outrage.

If the idea was to whip up hatred and anger among Christians towards Muslims, it will have failed. Indeed, about the only redeeming feature of this wave of cruel and murderous persecution, of which the Sri Lankan example was the worst but by no means the only one, has been its failure to incite retaliation or trigger a global conflict between faiths.