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Palm Sunday violence
Grenade attack hits procession
Two people were killed, and at least a dozen wounded, when a grenade exploded during a Palm Sunday procession in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“I was slightly hurt in the leg, but seeing those more seriously wounded and even killed, I asked the Lord, ‘What shall I do?’” Bishop Faustin Ngabu of Goma told the Fides news service. The bishop continued: “I found the strength to tell the people that I would celebrate Mass all the same. I asked them to pray for the victims and only at the end of Mass I realized that I too had been injured.”

Speaking to Fides just a few hours after the assault, Bishop Ngabu said: “Our people truly experienced—as we read in the proclamation of the Passion of the Lord—the struggle between light and darkness.”

Two people in the procession were killed: a priest and a 9-year-old girl. Among those wounded, one was the bishop himself, and four were priests.

The Palm Sunday procession was headed toward a school where the Mass was to be celebrated. (The Catholic cathedral in Goma is still closed for repairs, after suffering serious damage during the January eruption of a nearby volcano.) As the procession entered the school’s courtyard, two grenades were tossed among the participants.

A local Church source told Fides that “as yet no one knows who the attackers were. The situation here is tense.” The attack could be related to a recent strike by schoolteachers, who had encouraged the Catholic-school students to join them. But Church officials also pointed to the conflicts surrounding the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie, a rebel group that controls much of the region.