ROME -- The Sant’Egidio Catholic community expressed solidarity Monday for the attack against the Egyptian Coptic Church carried out in Cairo by Saint Mark’s Cathedral, killing innocent civilians, the religious community said.

  The Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio expressed their pain and solidarity with the Patriarch Tawadros II and with the entirety of Egypt’s Coptic Church, hit Sunday by a serious attack, leaving innocent people including six children dead.

 The attack happened in the heart of the Egyptian capital’s Coptic presence, right next to Saint Mark’s Cathedral in the Abbasseya zone.

 The attackers wanted to strike and create fear within a religious reality rooted in this land since the beginning of Christianism and completely woven into Egypt’s social and civic fabric.

 “Knowing the force of their antique faith, in this moment we express our complete affinity to the stricken Church, already tried many times for terrorism,” this Catholic community said.

 “At the same time, we feel the need to establish our distance in an honest way from whoever intends to threated the foundations of a cohabitation of religions throughout the whole region.”

 “We believe that this is not just a duty but a need if we want to abandon the spiral of violence that particularly hits minorities, and to rebuild a future of peace in the Mediterranean,” the Sant’Egidio community concluded.

 nkd