Witnessing

In yet another furore to grip the Christian community, the head of the Orthodox Church of Greece has joined the Pope controversy by attacking what he calls Islamic fanaticism in Africa.

In a scathing attack, barely 48 hours after a Somali Islamic cleric called for Muslims to kill the Pope for his Tuesday utterances, Archbishop Christodoulos told a sermon in Athens that Christians in Africa were suffering at the hands of ‘fanatic Islamists'.

"Many Christians on the Black Continent (Africa) suffer from fanatic Islamists. The example of Roman Catholic monks who were slaughtered last year... because they wore the cross and believed in our crucified Lord is still recent,” said Christodoulos.

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Cardinal George Pell says "the violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world" to a speech by Pope Benedict justified one of the very fears expressed in that address. "They showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence," Cardinal Pell said in a statement yesterday.

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NAIROBI, Kenya An elderly nun shot four times at the Somali hospital where she worked forgave her killers as she lay dying, colleagues said Monday in the wake of a murder that has focused attention on Islamic radicalism in the Horn of Africa country.

Sister Leonella, 65, muttered the words 'I forgive, I forgive' in Italian after being shot three times in the back by gunmen in an apparent execution-style killing, father Maloba Wesonga told The Associated Press at the nun's memorial mass in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday.

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