Another church has been attacked in Pakistan, this time by a violent mob amid escalating pre-Christmas tensions.

More than 50 armed men stormed St Paul’s Catholic Church on the night of Dec. 19 night in Sambrial Town of Sialkot district in Punjab Province.

The assailants fired shots into the air and entered the church compound, pulling off its plaque and damaging a window.

Parish priest Father Victor Sawera filed a complaint with police.

According to the priest, the mob was led by Asadullah Randhawa from the purportedly centrist Tehreek-e-Insaf political party of retired Pakistani Muslim cricketer Imran Khan.

Fr Sawera said some Protestant pastors were trying to apply political pressure to be able to use Catholic premises for small religious gatherings.

“This is our internal matter and Muslims should not get involved,” said Fr Sawera, who has been negotiating with Protestants over the disagreement since his transfer to the parish in July.

Desperate pastors were now trying to close the church, he added.

Fr Sawera expressed concern for the safety of worshippers in the wake of the Dec. 17 suicide bombing at the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province.

“We have a team of security volunteers, but they will not be on duty at Christmas,” Fr Sawera said.

“I do not want another conflict between locals. We shall get a court stay and try to resolve the matter peacefully.”

According to media reports, 16 churches have been attacked by terrorists and violent mobs in Punjab Province since 1997.

Cries of joy and seasonal hymns once again filled St Paul Cathedral in Mosul as Christmas Mass was celebrated there for the first time in three and a half years, following the northern Iraqi city’s liberation from Islamic State militants.

The Iraqi national anthem opened the Mass as women wailed with emotion. Armoured police outside protected the worshippers. Led by Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad, Christians and Muslims attended the Christmas Mass on Dec. 24 in a display of unity. “My message is to our brothers the Muslims,” said Patriarch Sako. “I ask them to change their way of thinking; you should know Christianity better. In the past, Christians were the majority in Iraq; today we are minority, but without us, Mosul will never be the same.”

Prime Mini-ster Sheikh Hasi-na of Bangladesh hosted a Christ-mas celebration in the capital Dhaka, which was attend-ed by some 500 leaders of various Christian Chur-ches and commu-nities of the overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

Organized by the Bangladesh Christian Association (BCA), the pre-Christmas get-together was held at Gana Bhaban, the Prime Minister’s official residence.

During the Dec. 21 event, Hasina mentioned Pope Francis’s pastoral visit to Dhaka, on Nov. 30-Dec.2, and urged her guests to convey her gratitude to the leader of the world’s Catholics “for his call to the international community to stand beside Bangladesh on the Rohingya crisis.”

Among the important guests of the Prime Minister was Cardinal Patrick D’Rozario, the Archbishop of Dhaka.

Cardinal D’Rozario told Vatican News that the Christmas gathering is hosted by the Prime Minister every year at Gana Bhaban and BCA takes the initiative of organizing the event which includes a high tea party. He said at gathering there were about 500 Christians from all denominations.

Church officials have expressed concern over the rising numbers of refugees from Myanmar and internally displaced people within the country itself as highlighted in a recent UN report. By the end of 2016, refugees from Myanmar rose to 490,300, up from 451,800 the previous year, making it the eighth largest refugee producing country in the world, said the UN’s refugee agency in its annual global trends study released on June 20. Father Thomas Htang Shan Mong, director of Myanmar Catholic bishops’ office for peace building and justice, blames a range of political and economic factors for the rise in refugees, as reported by the UN. “There has been 70 nearly years of conflict and unrest in Myanmar, especially in ethnic areas,” Father Mong told. Bangladesh hosts 276,200 Myanmar refugees while Thailand looks after 102,600, Malaysia 87,000, and India 15,600.

The UN report said there are more than 375,000 internally displaced people in Karen, Rakhine, Kachin and northern Shan States in Myanmar. In Kachin and Shan States, more than 100,000 displaced people remain in camps since renewed fighting erupted between the military and the Kachin Independence Army in 2011. In 1991, a large scale Rohingya exodus began and Caritas partnered with the Bangladeshi government to assist the refugees. Gomes said Caritas could no longer assist the Rohingya because it became — from the government’s point of view — a politically sensitive issue. While the Bangladeshis were relatively warm towards the refugees they have become stricter in recent years. The UN’s report said that were 65.6 million displaced people worldwide in 2016, an increase of 300,000 from the previous year. The figure includes 22.5 million refugees, the highest number in modern history

A bishop in Quetta, Pakistan, has praised the country’s “truly heroic” security services saying that had they not been so quick and decisive the death toll in attack at a packed Methodist Church could have run into hundreds. Describing how the police and army were on the scene in Quetta “in less than five minutes,” Bishop Victor Gnanapragasam said the security services killed one of the jihadi bombers outside the church and injured the other as he approached the main entrance, where he detonated his suicide vest. Bishop Gnanapragasam’s comments to Catholic charity Aid to the church in need came just after he attended funerals of several of the eight people reportedly killed in the blast. Saying that at least 45 were injured, the bishop spoke of the pain and grief of the Christian community, adding that a number of the 30 still in hospital were in a critical condition.

Amid reports that nearly 400 worshippers were at the church, he said many lives had been saved by the security services, adding: “The police and the army frontier corps were truly heroic. They got to the church in less than five minutes. “One of them was wounded as he tried to stop the suicide bombers.”

Bishop Gnanapragasam described visiting the wounded in hospital, including an 18-month-old boy who he said was covered in bandages from head to foot. He said that one man had a punctured lung and was unable to attend the funeral of his wife killed in the attack.” The people are very frightened. We have had a lot of people crying. We have done our very best to console them.”