His Holiness Pope Tawadros II
Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St Mark
Your Holiness,
Kissing Your Holy hands and asking for your blessing.
It is with a heavy heart that we have received the sad news of the massacre of Coptic Christians in Libya on February 16, 2015. The gruesome metlod by which their lives were taken for nothing else but their faith adds to the deep pain and anguish we feel.
The Coptic faithful are not strangers to martyrdom. Nowhere has the saying that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” hold a deeper meaning than in the history of the Coptic Church.
That is also why it has always been equally true that martyrs create faith as much as faith creates martyrs.
The Eritrean Orthodox Church mourns with the Coptic Church, which we consider both our sister and mother church, and pray to God to give us all the strength we need to carry on the light of the Gospel.
May God help us in this hour of tragedy and inhuman cruelty’to contend eamestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:4). May God repose the souls the martyrs. We also pray to God to console their families.
The Canonical Diocese of the Eritrean Orthodox Church in Diaspora under H.H. Abune Antonios
