By ANSA – Vatican City – Those who persecute Christians don’t care what denomination their victims are, Pope Francis said Wednesday.
“When terrorists or world powers persecute Christian minorities they don’t ask themselves: Are you a Lutheran? Orthodox? Reformed? Pentecostal? No… They only recognize one entity: a Christian,” the pope told the Conference of Secretaries of World Christian Communions, an international ecumenical organization.
“The enemy doesn’t make mistakes – he knows very well how to recognize where Jesus is – and this is the ecumenism (unity of Christianity) of the blood,” Francis told them in an audience prior to his weekly general hearing in St Peter’s Square.
“Today we are witnesses to it, and I’m thinking for example of the Coptic Orthodox friars whose throats were slashed on the beaches of Libya: they are our brothers. They bore witness to Jesus and died saying: ‘Help me Jesus!’… So, ecumenism in prayer, ecumenism on the path; and the enemy teaches us ecumenism of the blood,” the pontiff concluded.