Cross-posted on the Corner.
Pope Francis on last year’s Nice attack (via the National Catholic Register):
Pope Francis condemned the attack on Bastille Day Celebrations in France, calling it an act of “blind violence.”
While Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who drove a truck into the 14th July crowds in Nice last year, was undoubtedly unstable, had not shown much interest in religion and lacked any formal affiliation with ISIS, it seems fairly clear what pushed him over the edge.
In the final two weeks of his life, however, and perhaps for the first time, [Bouhlel] appeared to develop an interest in Islam, the religion into which he had been born. He played recitations of the Koran in his car; he criticized a friend for listening to music; he began to grow a beard. Online, he researched the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a killing carried out in the name of the Islamic State.
Also in evidence on [his] computer was his apparent fascination with the crowds drawn each summer to the Promenade des Anglais, on Nice’s tranquil coastline, where on July 14 the city’s Bastille Day fireworks can be watched unobstructed, reflected in the black mirror of the sea.
These things were not known by the time that the Pope diagnosed the slaughter as “blind violence”, but, given what’s happened in Europe in recent years, for Francis to describe the killings in the way that he did was as much of a rush to judgment as (in this case) immediately pinning the blame on Islamic extremism.
Pope Francis yesterday on the Barcelona attacks (via America magazine):
Pope Francis has condemned “the blind violence” of “the cruel terrorist attack” in Barcelona…
The Washington Post:
BARCELONA — Spain was seized Friday with the realization that it had incubated a large-scale terrorist plot, as authorities across Europe mounted a manhunt following the deadliest attacks to strike the country in more than a decade: two vehicle assaults in Barcelona and a Catalan coastal town.
Investigators believe that at least eight people plotted the attacks, putting them at a level of sophistication comparable to major strikes in Paris and Brussels in recent years. Other more recent attacks in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice were perpetrated by individuals operating largely on their own.
Spanish counterterrorism officers were scrambling to untangle the terrorist network, which involved at least four Moroccan citizens under age 25, according to intelligence officials. In addition to those four, authorities have detained three Moroccan men and a Spaniard.
In a sign that the attack could have been significantly worse, police said they believed the assailants were planning to use propane and butane canisters in an explosive assault against civilians. Instead, the gas ignited prematurely, destroying a house in Alcanar, about 100 miles southwest of Barcelona that was being used by the suspects. The explosion killed at least two people and injured 16, including police officers and firefighters investigating the site…
Blind violence. Really? The temptation, of course, is to dismiss the Pope’s remarks as simple foolishness, but that would be a mistake. To misquote part of an old line, he has eyes and he sees. The question is what he wants everyone else to see or, more accurately, not to see.
There are none so blind as those who are absolutely bound and determined not to see.