Priest who ministered at school massacre warns of mounting tensions

Published: 2004-09-08

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- A Polish priest who ministered to survivors of the school massacre in southern Russia has warned of mounting tensions and urged religious leaders to calm demands for revenge. "Having been a priest for 22 years, I should perhaps have been better prepared, but having watched car after car bringing little children's bodies for burial, I'm deeply shocked," said Father Janusz Blaut, pastor of the Catholic parish in Vladykavkaz, capital of the North Ossetia province. "The church's task will be to calm emotions and discourage people from answering evil with evil. But it won't be easy to convince a father who's lost his wife and four children -- not by some natural catastrophe, but through a human act of terror," he said. The priest spoke by telephone Sept. 7 after attending a third day of funerals at nearby Beslan, where more than 320 children and adults died Sept. 3, during the end of a school hostage situation caused by suspected guerrillas sympathetic to the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

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