Islamabad, Pakistan, Oct 11, 2012 / 08:10 am
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 Oct. 10. "God created man in his own image; every life is precious and belongs to Him alone."
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. She was in stable condition at a hospital in Peshawar, where doctors removed a bullet that passed through her head and stopped in her shoulder.
Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited the unconscious girl in the hospital and denounced the attack.