VATICAN: HINDU ATTACK ON CHRISTIAN AS 'SIN AGAINST GOD'

[Daanyeer]

Vatican describes Hindu attack on Christian orphanage as a 'sin against God'
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk
August 26, 2008


A senior Vatican official has described an arson attack on a Christian orphanage in India that left a woman dead as "a sin against God and humanity".

Monday's attack came after a strike by Hindu hardliners, who blamed Christians for a Communist insurgency in the east of the country in which a Hindu religious leader was killed last week.

A crowd had converged on the orphanage run by Christian missionaries, told nearly 20 residents to leave, and then set it alight with an elderly priest and a lay teacher locked inside.

The teacher, aged 21, died in the blaze while the priest was hospitalised with bad burns. The orphanage was located in Khuntapali, a village in Orissa state in the east of the country.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran called the attack: "a sin against God and humanity". He said it had no possible justification.

"Certainly religion cannot be invoked for crimes of this type," he said. Cardinal Tauran heads the Vatican's council for inter-religious dialogue.

An official statement from the Vatican was less blunt. "The Holy See expresses reprehension for these actions which harm the dignity and the freedom of people and compromise peaceful civilian coexistence," it said.

"I was in India three weeks ago, in New Delhi," Cardinal Tauran said. "I met two Hindu religious groups and none of their spiritual leaders spoke to me about such attacks, which are not occurring for the first time."