Welby, Israel and the meaning of persecution

I arrived in Colombo the morning after the attack and went straight to the morgue to identify some of the 269 victims. The concrete building, with its pretty wooden roof, had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of Christian dead. Several bodies lay on the floor of the entrance, some only partially covered up. One had gone black. It was very hot and humid and the smell lingered in my clothes for weeks. Outside the morgue, a computer had been set up. Distraught relatives were encouraged to view a slideshow of body parts to see if they could recognise a clump of hair, a fragment of ear or a finger still wearing a ring.

This was the 2019 Easter Bombings in Sri Lanka, in which three packed churches and three hotels were targeted by Islamist suicide bombers. Forty-five foreign nationals, of whom nine were children, were among the dead. Eight were British, including brother and sister Daniel and Amelie Linsey, aged 19 and 15.