Nuns raped in Bosnian convent siege

by Timothy Elphick
POPE John Paul II this week offered prayers for 20 nuns said to have been abused and raped by Serbian forces at their convent in the ex-Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzogovina.
The Pope's prayers were contained in a telegram to Bishop Franjo Koma.rica of Banja Luka. a diocese in the front line of the region's civil war.
Vatican Radio reported on Saturday that the youngest nuns at the Convent of the Adorers of the Holy Blood in Nova Topola. 30 miles north of Bartja Luka, had been raped. Other members of the community were also abused, the radio station said.
Four Serbian militiamen belonging to the so-called White Eagle group were said to have carried out the attacks.
Only last week 15 Franciscan friars and eight nuns of the order
were abducted and held hostage by Serbian militia in BosniaHerzogovina. Their release was secured by officials of the European Community's peacekeeping force.
"The Holy Father raises fervent prayers to God, who alone is the source of peace, to comfort those suffering in body and heart the consequences of the grave acts of violence and to invoke pardon for the many unheard of atrocities," John Paul's message said.
"As a pledge of divine protection, the Pope imparts his apostolic blessing on the religious and all the faithful" of the diocese of Bosnia-Herzogovina.
Vatican Radio's director of programming, Fr Frederic° Lombardi, said "such revolting deeds deeply offend the dignity and conscience of everyone, no matter to which ethnic group or religious confession they belong".
An editorial in the Vatican daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano commented that the attacks on the nuns represented a "symptomatic and revealing episode of the barbaric hatred that marks this conflict, and of the desire to eliminate an entire people".
Neville Kyrke-Srnith, national director of the international pastoral relief agency Aid to the Church in Need. said the incident in Nova Topola was "just one more terrible example of the persecution of Catholic priests and nuns in former Yugoslavia at the hands of the Federal Army and the Serbian guerrillas".
• Caritas in Hungary warned this week that thousands of displaced Bosnians now in Croatia will flee to neighbouring countries if living conditions in the refugee centres deteriorate further.
An estimated 400,000 Bosnians are have already sought refuge in Croatia. Caritas in the Hungarian border diocese of Pecs has already established 30 distribution points for relief supplies