Men on motorcycles murdered a father and injured a 16 -year -old teenager when they participated in a pilgrimage to the National Marian Sanctuary of the Virgin Mary in Mariamabad in Pakistan, a fact that has shocked Christians in the Muslim majority country.
According to reported The Vatican Agency Fides on September 12, the murder of Afzal Masih, married and father of four children, occurred on September 7, when he was heading on a pilgrimage to the sanctuary located in the Archdiocese of Lahore.
Receive the main news of ACI Press by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social networks. Subscribe to our free channels today:
“We are dismayed by his death. He was a faithful who came to pay tribute and pray to the Virgin Mary. Today we entrust her soul in the care of the celestial mother and express our most condolences to her family,” Fides told Fides Fr. Tariq George, rector of the sanctuary.
The murder occurred while AFZAL Masih was traveling with fifteen faithful and several young man, with challenging attitudes, they approached the minibus.
When the group of pilgrims stopped at a 30 -kilometer service station of the sanctuary, a man identified as Muhammad Waqas opened fire with a rifle, killing AFZal Masih with a shot in the neck and wounding his cousin Harris Masih, 16 years old.
AFZAL was transferred to the hospital, but died. After his capture, Muhmamad Waqas told the police that “I had no intention of killing.”
Christians in Pakistan ask that the case be investigated and justice be done.
The Marian sanctuary celebrated its annual party from September 5 to 8, which brought together some 500,000 Catholic faithful and other Christian confessions, in addition to Muslims and Hindus.
Despite the rains and floods, indicates Fr. Qaisar Feroz, communications manager of the Pakistan Episcopal Conference, the faithful did not stop going to the Marian sanctuary.
Mariamabad, founded in 1893 by Capuchin missionaries, houses a Marian grotto inspired by the grotto of the Sanctuary of Lourdes in France. He was proclaimed National Sanctuary in 1949.
Pakistan, with a population of more than 241 million inhabitants. Muslims are more than 96%; While Christians are only 1.4% of the country, that is, about 3.3 million inhabitants.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.