On the fifth anniversary of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings, Sri Lanka's Catholic church, led by Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, has decided to progress toward canonizing all 273 individuals, including 11 Indians, who lost their lives in the tragic incident. This announcement was made during a mass ceremony.
"A person can be named a saint only after the completion of 5 years since one's sacrifice. Therefore, we will move towards declaring Easter Sunday victims as saints on April 21 this year," Ranjith said.
On April 21, 2019, nine suicide bombers affiliated with the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ), linked to ISIS, carried out a series of explosions targeting three churches and three luxury hotels in Sri Lanka.
"Those who died in churches in April 2019 sacrificed their lives for what they believed in. They came to church because they believed in Christ," Ranjith said.
In the past five years, Cardinal Ranjith has been in conflict with the government, advocating for justice on behalf of the victims. He criticised all investigations, branding them as deceptive and a political smokescreen.
Ranjith has called for an international inquiry into the attacks, while the government asserts the arrest of hundreds of individuals and progress in legal proceedings. Initially, it was reported that 270 people had lost their lives in the attacks. The then-president Maithripala Sirisena and his top defence officials faced accusations of negligence in preventing the attack despite receiving prior intelligence from India.