Mr. Speaker, one of the bedrock principles of Canadian society is the freedom to believe as we choose and the freedom to worship without intimidation. This is not how things work everywhere in this world. Yesterday, we got another glimpse of the very real pain that extremism and intolerance cause.
We mourn today the death of dozens of people in Baghdad who, when they woke up yesterday, wanted nothing more than to go to their church and to worship their God. They never got to. Interrupted by a car bomb, the Our Lady of Salvation Church was overrun by a group of armed thugs who first shot the priest, then herded the congregation into an enclosed area and set off explosives when the Iraqi authorities launched a rescue attempt.
This misguided and evil act needs to be denounced.
Perhaps the Pope expressed it best when he called it “absurd violence, made more ferocious because it was directed against unarmed people gathered in the house of God”.
While it may not seem to us that our words coming from so far away can make a difference, we must still say them, and from this distance, we pray for God's mercy on both the victims and their attackers.