Pope Francis Asks Sri Lanka To Reveal Identity Of 2019 Easter Bombers Amid Conspiracy Buzz

The island is held by extreme deficiencies of food, fuel and drugs with its 22 million inhabitants wrestling with day-to-day power outages and dashing expansion.

The head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State, Pope Francis (File photo: Getty)

New Delhi: The head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State, Pope Francis on Monday has urged Sri Lankan authorities to reveal the names of the people who were behind the country's 2019 Easter bombings.

About 270 people, including at least 45 foreign nationals, were killed and some 500 were injured in a series of coordinated Islamic terrorist suicide bombings on 21 April 2019, when the bombings of 3 cathedrals and 3 major hotels took place.

"Please, out of love for justice, out of love for your people, let it be made clear once and for all who were responsible for these events," the pope said in an appeal to Colombo as reported by the news agency AFP.

"This will bring peace to your conscience and to your country."

While addressing some 3,500 Sri Lankans in Italy, including some of the victims, the pope additionally said he supplicated that Sri Lanka can likewise brave the most obviously terrible monetary emergency in its set of experiences.

The island is held by extreme deficiencies of food, fuel and drugs with its 22 million inhabitants wrestling with day-to-day power outages and dashing expansion.

The head of Sri Lanka's Catholic Church, Malcolm Ranjith, who led mass at St. Peter's basilica not long prior to meeting with the pope on Monday, called for "justice and change" in his country.

"We want the international community to insist that, before giving any aid to Sri Lanka, that the government realise that they have to change the way things have been done," he told Vatican Radio.

Cardinal Ranjith last month encouraged the UN Human Rights Council to set up a mechanism to probe the 2019 bombings which Colombo had accused of local Islamic redials.

"The first impression of this massacre was that it was purely the work of a few Islamic extremists," Ranjith said.

"However, subsequent investigations indicate that this massacre was part of a grand political plot."

The cardinal has proposed that the attacks assisted Rajapaksa emerge as a "national security candidate" and winning the November 2019 election.

Ranjith has blamed Rajapaksa's administration for military intelligence operatives named in two separate local investigations which stay inconclusive.

Sri Lanka's High Court in February absolved two high-ranking representatives blamed for "crimes against humanity" for failing to prevent the Easter Sunday bombings.