A Church of Pakistan lay pastor was gunned down and a priest wounded by unknown assailants as the leaders drove home from a worship service on Sunday in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar, where Christians had suffered their deadliest attack in the country’s history nearly a decade earlier.
Church of Pakistan Bishop of Peshawar Humphrey Peters said that William Siraj, 75, was shot and died instantly in the ambush in the Gulbahar neighbourhood, while Patrick Naeem, 55, sustained a bullet wound but was in stable condition. A third church leader in the car was unharmed, he said.
The Protestant church leaders were returning from All Saints Church parish when two gunmen riding a motorcycle intercepted their car and opened fire on them, Peters said.
“Siraj received one bullet in the forehead and one on the arm and died instantly, while Rev. Naeem received a bullet wound in the hand,” he said. “It’s a miracle that Rev. Naeem and another priest escaped the volley of bullets.”
The assailants fled the scene unchallenged, according to wit-nesses, Peters said.
Siraj was a senior lay leader and led worship at three different parishes while Naeem was the priest of the All Saints Church parish, Peters said.

Egypt’s president on Wednesday swore in the first-ever Coptic Christian to head the country’s highest court.
Judge Boulos Fahmy is the 19th person to preside over the Supreme Constitutional Court since it was established in 1969. President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi picked the 65-year-old Fahmy from among the court’s five oldest of 15 sitting judges, as is prescribed by law.
Fahmy succeeded Judge Saeed Marei, who retired over health reasons, according to Mohammed Bassal, a respected expert in Egypt’s judicial affairs and editorial manager of the Shorouk daily.
Fahmy has headed the court’s General Secretariat since 2014. His appointment as chief judge has been welcomed by many in the Muslim majority country.
Moushira Khattab, head of the government-appointed National Council for Human Rights, hailed the decision as “historic” and “a giant move” in the field of political and civil rights.
However, Ishak Ibrahim, a prominent expert on Christian affairs in Egypt, said in a Face-book post that the move will have little impact on ending discrimination against Christians as they are vastly under represented in Egypt’s state institutions.

A respected Islamic scholar and Parisian Catholic priest is condemning the recitation of the Koran and Muslim prayer in Paris’ largest church as the “abandonment of evangelization” and the “introduction of the Antichrist.” Fr Guy Pagès’ censure is being echoed by Parisian Muslim converts, who face the death penalty for apostasy from Islam — including a former high-ranking Islamic jurist who confessed to engaging in interfaith events “only to sanitize the true face of Islam in preparation for jihad.”

An international coalition of Christian leaders, including the president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, appealed for the release of Hong Kong’s Catholic pro-democracy supporter Jimmy Lai and other imprisoned activists as part of a Chinese New Year amnesty.
Cardinal Charles Bo of Myanmar, FABC president, joined other Catholic and Protestant leaders from across Europe, North America and Asia to send a letter to Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, a practicing Catholic, reported ucanews.com.
“There is the very real prospect that Jimmy Lai may spend the rest of his years in prison. This would be a sad injustice and would raise unfortunate doubts as to China’s continued commitment to the ‘one country, two systems’ model and the tolerance it engenders,” the letter said.
Ucanews.com reported Fr Franco Mella of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions and the Rev. Fung Chi Wood, former Hong Kong legislator and a priest of the Hong Kong Anglican Church, handed the letter to Lam Jan. 31.

Abune Antonios, a confined Eritrean Orthodox Church patriarch and the longest-serving prisoner of conscience in the Horn of Africa, died on February 9 at the age of 94.
He was still serving detention in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, after his arrest in 2006 just two years after his installation as the third patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Church. For 16 years, he was kept in solitary confinement under the orders of the country’s authoritarian leader, President Isaias Afwerki, for his resistance to government interference in the ancient church.
Eritrea has long been on the US State Department’s list of worst religious freedom violators, and ranks No. 6 on Open Doors’ 2022 list of where Christian persecution is worst.
Rashad Hussain, the newly confirmed US religious freedom ambassador, said in a tweet that he was “saddened by the news” and that “Patriarch Abune Antonios was a true leader.”
“It is very unfortunate that the patriarch died while in detention. There was no reason for the government of Eritrea to put him in detention,” Francis Kuria, the secretary general of the African Council of Religious Leaders, told RNS. “The Orthodox Church in Eritrea and elsewhere is always very supportive of the people’s development.”