Pakistan’s Catholic bishop supports girl shot by Taliban

(October 12, 2012) A Catholic bishop in Pakistan has voiced “sympathy and solidarity” towards Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Muslim activist critically injured by Taliban gunmen who said they shot her for her advocacy of girls’ education and Western culture. “Every person has a sacred right to life and education,” Bishop Rufin Anthony of Islamabad-Rawalpindi told Fides news agency on Wednesday. “God created man in his own image; every life is precious and belongs to Him alone,” the bishop said. On Oct. 9 masked gunmen singled out and shot Yousafzai on a bus of schoolchildren in Pakistan’s northwestern Swat Valley near the Afghanistan border. Two other girls were injured, one of whom was still in critical condition as of Wednesday evening. Malala was in stable condition at a hospital in Peshawar, where doctors removed a bullet that passed through her head and stopped in her shoulder. Meanwhile around 200 protesters took to the streets in Lahore against the attack. With placards that said “I am Malala,” “stand with me or the Taliban” and “I was shot for wanting peace and education,” the demonstrators gathered in front of the Punjab assembly and chanted slogans against Taliban “murderers.”