Easter vigils remember victims of Kenya terrorist attack

Christian students murdered in Kenya on Holy Thursday have been remembered at Easter vigil ceremonies at Dublin's Pro Cathedral by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

“I cannot celebrate the light of Christ this night without thinking of those students in Kenya who were singled out one by one to be killed precisely because of their Christian identity,” he said.

“I think of the horrors being carried out against Christians by groups such as Boko Haram. I think of all Christian believers who have to celebrate this Christian festival of Easter light in the deepest of darkness.”

The rampage at Moi University in Nairobi’s Garissa area by Somali-based al-Shabaab militants left 147 dead, most of them young women in their 20s.

Up to 20 police officers and soldiers were also killed. The militants stormed hostels where the students were staying at 5.30am on Holy Thursday. They separated Christians from Muslims and allowed the latter to leave before massacring dozens of remaining students using grenades and machine guns.

The Catholic primate Archbishop Eamon Martin also made reference to the massacre in his homily at Easter vigil ceremonies in St Patrick's Cathedral Armagh.

“Sadly, the Cross of Good Friday continues to cast a long shadow in our world – from the hungry lands of Ethiopia where Mahlet, the young girl on this year’s Lenten Trócaire box, lives – to the refugee camps of Syria, to the homes of Kenya where families are left devastated this weekend by the murder of their loved ones at Garissa University on Holy Thursday”, he said.

“If the story of salvation had ended on Good Friday, we would be a people of despair, only able to cry out as Jesus did on the Cross: `My God, my God, why have you abandoned us?’,” he said.

In Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin went on to point out that “the light of Christ has been distorted over history, of course, also by Christian believers themselves through our sinfulness, our uncaring, our intolerance or our desire to impose and to dominate. But the light of the Christian message is constantly being rekindled in the hearts of believers by the light of the resurrection.”

The resurrection, he said, “baffles human understanding”.

It, he said, was “not something that can be proven within the categories of human science, because it is something which takes us beyond those categories into a new form of existence, one to which we are invited through our faith in Jesus Christ, even today on our earthly journey. Jesus is neither a wise man from distant history nor just a restored corpse. Jesus is new humanity which opens unheard of hope for us, even now. That is the challenge of the Christian life.”

Christians were “called to be men and women who treasure life in the depth of its meaning and thus be leaders in the fight for human dignity. Every human life has its value.”

The resurrection was a “sign of life and hope for all,” he said