The message delivered during Sunday’s morning service at the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. Mark in Jersey City was all too familiar: Pray for all of those killed by bombings at their churches in Egypt.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for two terrorist attacks on Coptic churches in the Egyptian Nile Delta town of Tanta and the coastal city of Alexandria that killed at least 44 people during crowded Palm Sunday services, the latest in a string of attacks against the Christian minorities in the majority-Muslim country.
The bombing in Tanta hit especially close to home at St. Mark, where many of the U.S. Copts have friends and relatives who died or were injured in Sunday’s attack. Joseph Ghabour, a deacon at St. Mark, the first Coptic church to open in the U.S, said the church used its morning service to pray for the dead, the wounded and their families. In what has become a common theme, clergy and parishioners also prayed for those who carried out the grisly attacks.