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Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, sent a letter to the President of the Nigerian Conference of Bishops in connection with the loss of people in terrorist attacks on Christmas Day.

His Excellency Felix Alaba Adeosin Job
Archbishop of Ibadan
President of the Nigerian Conference of Catholic Bishops

Your Excellency:
It is with a feeling of profound sorrow that I learnt of the appalling atrocities at Christian churches in the capital of your country on the feast of the Nativity of Christ. It was on the day, on which Christians rejoice at the coming into the world of the Lord Jesus Christ who has given us hope of the triumph of good and love, that the forces of evil and hatred committed a crime killing many innocent people.
I would like to express my sincere condolences to you, the clergymen and all Christians in Nigeria, to the relatives and near and dear of the victims.
The terrorist attacks in Nigeria on Christmas are not only a crime against Christian believers, but frustrate hope of intereligious dialogue and civil peace in the region. I wish to believe that reason will prevail in political life of Nigerian society, and people of good will, no matter which religion they profess, will manage to stop the continuing acts of lawlessness.
May God, who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16), rest the souls of the innocent victims, console their near and dear and bestow peace and his blessings on the long-suffering land of Nigeria.
With love in the Lord,


/+ Hilarion/
Metropolitan of Volokolamsk
Chairman
Moscow Patriarchate’s
Department for External Church Relations