In a city that is still under shock after the suicide bombing which took place on 27 March in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal park, the number of victims is rising: The list of the deceased is updated on a daily based as people in a critical condition die after being admitted to Punjab’s biggest hospitals. So far, the government has informed that the death toll has now risen to 80 and 29 of these victims are children.
Caritas Lahore, which closely monitors cases of faithful injured on Easter Day, confirmed to Vatican Insider that 23 Christians and 57 Muslims have died. The executive director of the organisation’s programmes, the Catholic layman Rojar Noor Alam, said Caritas is providing material assistance to Catholic families affected by the tragedy and has also set up a psychological rehabilitation course to help adults and children overcome this traumatic experience. It is primarily “about overcoming fear, uncertainty and nightmares and finding hope for the future,” Rojar Noor Alam explains. That is not easy for mothers who have had to pick up the bits of their child’s corpse or for young people who have seen their brothers, sisters and friends being killed. The result of gratuitous and senseless violence.
Inayat Ali is among the injured: he is cared for and comforted by his wife and two children but his three other children died in the blast. This family has been destroyed forever. This is why Caritas is trying to help families that have suffered psychological, human and spiritual traumas. “We cannot take away the pain caused by the loss of our loved ones,” Alam said, “but we can be close to people in times of need, showing them that we take care of them”. This is the ethos of the long-term rehabilitation programme designed for victims’ families. “A family’s ability to overcome a tragedy and regain faith in life depends on their vision of the future. Faith in Christ is key in this process.”
The Archbishop Sebastian Shaw, who periodically goes to visit victims in hospital, told Vatican Insider: “You can imagine how difficult it is to comfort them. What words can one possibly find to console a mother whose children aged 4 and 6 have been seriously injured, while her husband and another son have been killed. The only source of hope is God.” “Another mother,” Shaw continued, “lost her two children and her husband. She had travelled from the Sindh province to Lahore for Easter. She lost her entire family. Her life changed forever. How can one possibly comfort her? The only possible words are those Jesus pronounced: Peace be with you.” The Archbishop recalled the mission of the Church in Lahore today: “Bring the risen Christ and restore peace and hope to these wounded and desperate people.”
“After terrorist groups symbolically struck out against the very heart of the city, the institutions reacted with a crackdown conducted by the Punjab police and the intelligence agencies of the country’s most historically important province from a political, economic and social point of view.”
This is the central region of Pakistan, around which the entire nation gravitates, although the institutional capital is in the northern part of the country (Islamabad) and the most commercially active hub is the southern port of Karachi. This is why, for some years now, the various factions of the Pakistani Taleban have been focusing their attention, bolstering their presence and establishing logistical bases in the populous province.
In recent days, the police arrested 21 suspects in a series of antiterrorist raids and operations in Lahore and the nearby city of Gujranwala, after a mass inspection carried out mainly in Iqbal Town, the neighbourhood in Lahore where the attack took place and which is heavily populated with Christians.
Christian communities continue to call upon the institutions to take coherent action in order to stop and prevent violence, “not forgetting the responsibility of all 200 million Pakistani citizens of all religious faiths who are called to do their bit every day to promote stability, peace and prosperity in the nation,” noted Inayat Bernard, a Lahore priest who is also deputy editor in chief of The Christian Review, a local magazine.
“The government, political and religious leaders and all Pakistani citizens,” Bernard stressed, “are called to stand up to extremist forces. The entire nation must stand united against terrorism. People of all faiths can promote peace, social harmony and protect each other from terrorism. The Catholic Church and Pakistan’s religious minorities are asking the government to adopt efficient measures for restoring peace and harmony in society.”
