On April 21, 2019, the town of Katuwapitiya, in Sri Lanka, saw a joyful Easter Sunday turn into a scene of unimaginable horror. An explosion completely destroyed the Church of St. Sebastian, claiming the lives of 115 people, including 27 children. This tragedy was one of eight coordinated attacks carried out by seven terrorists in different parts of the country, which resulted in the deaths of 264 people and left more than 500 wounded.

Devanjalie Marista Fernando is a young survivor of this attack. She spoke to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) about this terrible day that scarred her for life. “I went to the church with my mother. It was full, so I sat at the back, under the fan, for a bit more air. My mother sat further ahead. We received communion, and then we heard a very loud explosion. I saw a ball of fire, and the roof began to fall. I covered my head with my arms and ran out of the church, where I found my father. I was in shock. My father asked me where my mother was, and I raced back into the church. I found her in the benches, injured and dying.”

Father Gregory Vajira Silva, a Third Order Franciscan, also recalled that terrible moment. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were bodies everywhere. Everything happened so quickly, unexpectedly, and brutally.”

Katuwapitiya, known as “Little Rome” because of a large Catholic population and many religious monuments, went into mourning. The community, which was used to having one or two burials a month, suddenly had to bury over 100 people, all from a single parish. “We didn’t have enough space to bury them, so the owner of the local cemetery donated a plot of land,” Father Silva said.

The attacker’s betrayal made a deep wound. “The man who did this to us lived here for three months, like just another villager. He lived among us. People believed and trusted in him; they treated him like a brother. But he simply betrayed the love they had shown him,” the priest explained. This act of violence has uncovered “an ideology” that threatens the very fabric of society.

After the attack, the churches in Katuwapitiya were closed for security reasons, but the faithful kept calling, again and again, to ask about Mass times. Father Silva and other priests began to celebrate in people’s homes, like the Christians of the Early Church, stressing the importance of faith in times of persecution. “We realized that we have no life without the Eucharist,” he told ACN.

 This attack was deeply traumatic for the community. The priest also felt the terrible loss of his parishioners. “Many people lost family members. As a priest, I also lost people I knew and loved. We need a great miracle of healing. Everyone has been affected.”

Helping the families through their pain became the most important mission for the Church. “We decided to walk beside them,” Father Silva said. “We didn’t preach at that time. We were simply there for them, and they could feel it. We helped them, listened to them, cried with them; we shared what they were experiencing at that time.” Each priest was assigned a group of families, to whom he offered emotional and practical support.

Father Silva has no doubt that the victims of the Easter Sunday massacre are martyrs: they died because they chose to be in Church, to proclaim their faith in Christ and the Resurrection. And he is not alone. On the fifth anniversary of the attack, the community of the Archdiocese of Colombo delivered a petition to Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, signed by thousands of people, asking that he open a cause for the beatification of the 171 Catholics killed that day.

Though the scars of that Easter Sunday remain, Katuwapitiya is a living witness to hope in eternal life. Father Silva’s faith was severely shaken. He remembered kneeling by the altar, looking for answers for the suffering he saw. In that moment of despair, a sign came from above: Father Silva saw the missal on the blood-splattered altar, and the missal was unsullied, except for a drop of blood. The blood was just above a statement of consolation and hope, that promised eternal life and resurrection.