By Libya Herald staff.
17 February 2015:
Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has called the 21 Egyptian Copts who . . .[restrict]were murdered by supporters of the Islamic State “martyrs” who died purely because they were Christians.
Speaking to the head of the Church of Scotland who is in Rome to meet the pope, he described the killings as a “barbaric assassination” and called for payers for “our brother Copts, whose throats were slit for the sole reason of being Christian, that the Lord welcome them as martyrs…”
The wording is significant. In Roman Catholic theology, a Christian martyr is de facto a saint.
Relations between the Catholic and Coptic churches have for centuries been difficult.
The Islamists who slaughtered the 21 Egyptians and who made it clear in their video that they had done so specifically because they were Christians, warned at the end of it that one of their aims is to conquer Rome. [/restrict]
