Address to the Moderator and Representatives of the Church of Scotland
A short address of Pope Francis to a delegation of the Church of Scotland. At its end he turns to his own language to speak of the Coptic Christians killed in Libya, of whose deaths he had read that day.
Most of the address concerns relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland. In the last paragraph but one the pope says that he will speak in his native tongue to express his sorrow, that he has read that day of the execution of “twenty-one or twenty-two” Coptic Christians, and that the blood of Christians of every confession is one and confesses Christ. He names this the ecumenism of blood.
These are his words on the day after the deaths were made known, before the number and the identities of the men were settled. See the Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya.
Cited in
- 15 February 2015, firm date