Sri Lanka Catholics turn to TV mass amid bomb threat
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church will televise a private Sunday mass after cancelling regular services over fears of a repeat of Easter suicide bombings that killed 257 people, a spokesman said.
Father Edmund Tillakaratne said public masses were suspended for a second week, but a service conducted by Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith will be broadcast on national television.
“It will be like last Sunday when we had a service at Archbishop’s chapel and telecast it live,” Tillakaratne said.
Ranjith, who is also archbishop of Colombo, said Thursday that a “reliable foreign source” had alerted him to possible attacks this weekend, leading him to cancel Sunday services for the second week.
“The information we have from a reliable foreign source is that attackers are planning to hit a very famous church and a Catholic institution,” the Cardinal said in a statement.
Official sources said the Thewatte National Basilica, just outside Colombo, was the suspected target, and the military deployed hundreds of troops to search the area.
“There were no explosives found, but we have stepped up security in the neighbourhood,” a police official said.
The government is going ahead with plans to reopen public schools on Monday, but the Church said Catholic schools will remain shut “until further notice”. — AFP