Vatican City, Dec 20, 2016 / 01:50 am
After 12 people were killed when a truck rammed into crowds at a Berlin Christmas market, the German bishops have voiced their sorrow, and have invited people to join them in praying for the victims and their families.
"The news from Berlin has deeply shaken me," Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German Bishops Conference, said in a Dec. 20 statement following the incident.
"The violence on the Christmas market is the opposite of what the visitors wanted, and my sympathy goes to the relatives of the dead and the injured, for whom I will pray," he said, adding that in this "difficult time for the city of Berlin and our country, we must stand together as a society."
According to CNN, the truck barreled into crowds of Christmas shoppers at a Christmas market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin's western Breitscheidplatz neighborhood around 8p.m. local time Dec. 19, going roughly 40 mph.