Sri Lankan churches begin their recovery from Easter bombings
Jeyaraj Sivarajasingam was heading to Easter services at Jampettah Methodist Church in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, when he heard the bomb blast.
It was unmistakable, he said, coming from the direction of St. Anthony’s Shrine, a Catholic church about three city blocks away. “I ran to the church because I know many people there,” said Sivarajasingam, who is national director of Lanka Prison Fellowship.
For more than a decade Sivarajasingam, who is Protestant, worked in youth ministry in the neighborhoods near Colombo Harbor where suicide bombers on April 21 launched the first of six near-simultaneous explosions across the breadth of Sri Lanka. The attacks, which targeted three churches and three luxury hotels, killed 257 people and injured more than 500. Nearly all the victims—about 225 people—died in their churches just as Easter morning services were getting underway....
