Colombo, 21 April

Sri Lanka's Catholic church says the Vatican has named 167 of its faithful killed in Islamic State-inspired suicide bombings six years ago as witnesses of faith.

Hundreds, including Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic religious figures, attended a vigil Monday in memory of the victims at the church of St Anthony, targeted in the attacks.

Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, told the attendees Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican, has included the names of 167 Catholics who died in the bombings in the churches of St Anthony in Colombo and St Sebastian in Negombo “in the catalogue of the witnesses of the faith in its order book, considering the context of their heroism.”

He said they were chosen “due to violent opposition to their faith motivated by odium fidei,' the hate of the faith.”

Ranjith also said seven victims of other faiths were “respectfully remembered.”

Witnesses of faith are those who sacrificed their lives for their belief.

Pope Francis formalised in 2023 a new category of recognition by the church of people who lost their lives while professing the Catholic faith and created a special Vatican commission to catalogue their cases.

The commission, based in the Vatican's saint-making office, has gathered hundreds of cases, with a view to highlighting them alongside officially recognised martyrs of the church, who are on the path to possible beatification or sainthood.

More than 260 people, including 42 foreigners, were killed in the near-simultaneous bombings during Easter Sunday at three tourist hotels and three churches, two Catholic and one Protestant, on 21 April, 2019.

The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has demanded further probing in the attacks, particularly after British television Channel 4 interviewed a man who said that he arranged a meeting between a local IS-inspired group, National Thowheed Jamath, and a top state intelligence official to hatch a plot to create insecurity in Sri Lanka and enable former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to win the presidential election later that year.