After the deadly attacks in Paris claimed by Islamic State militants, Pope Francis said yesterday that using God’s name to justify violence was sacrilege.
“I want to firmly repeat that the path of violence and hate does not resolve humanity’s problems, and using the name of God to justify this path is blasphemy,” the Pope told pilgrims in St Peter’s Square.
“Such barbarism leaves us stunned and we ask ourselves how the heart of man could plan and execute such horrible acts, which shocked not only France but the whole world,” he said.
The Pope then invited the faithful to pray with him for the innocent victims of the attacks. It was the first time the Pope had spoken directly to the general public about the Friday attacks, though in a radio interview on Saturday he characterised the assault as inhuman.
IS claimed responsibility for the attacks that killed 129 people, saying they were in revenge for French military action in Syria and Iraq.
Meanwhile two days after the worst attacks in France since World War II, the names of many victims are starting to emerge, their smiling faces shining out from an array of social websites – a cameraman, a foreign exchange student, lawyers, an artist, a journalist, tourists, two sisters at a birthday party.
Such barbarism leaves us stunned and we ask ourselves how the heart of man could execute such horrible acts
Because the killers struck on a Friday night, targeting a packed concert hall, bars and a soccer stadium, many of the dead were young, their lifes and loves openly posted on the internet, which has now been used to mark their passing.
Friends of a young couple from eastern France, Marie Lausch and Mathias Dymarski, announced their deaths on Youtube.
French music magazine Les Inrocks announced the death of one of their journalists, Guillaume Decherf, saying the 43-year-old was the father of two children.
All three died at the Bataclan concert hall, alongside 86 other victims killed when gunmen opened fire on a crowd watching the US rock band Eagles of Death Metal.
The musicians all escaped, but their merchandise manager, a 36-year-old Briton named Nick Alexander, died.
“Nick was not just our brother, son and uncle, he was everyone’s best friend, generous, funny and fiercely loyal,” his family said
Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world and the dead came from Congo to California and from Mexico to Morocco.
Two Romanians – Ciprian Calciu and his girlfriend Lacramioara Pop – were shot dead at the Belle Equipe bar. “The two had the bad luck to be in the wrong place,” Romanian government official Anton Rohian said.
One of the oldest victims was Patricia San Martin Nunez, 61, from Chile, who died alongside her daughter Elsa Delplace.
Many of those killed were young students drawn to Paris’s renowned centres of higher education. Valeria Solesin, 28, was a PhD student from Italy studying at the Sorbonne University. She died at the entrance to Bataclan, shot as she was trying to enter.
“This sort of thing usually happens to other people,” her father, Alberto, said. “She had a scholarship and she would have finished her degree next year.”