VATICAN CITY – The Vatican has picked the first Pakistani as the candidate for sainthood.
Twenty years old Akash Bashir has won the honour for his courage and bravery. He stopped a suicide bomber from entering a church in Lahore in 2015 and saved countless lives by sacrificing his own.
Bashir was a resident of Youhanabad, a densely populated Christian neighbourhood in Lahore. He volunteered as a security guard at his local St John’s Catholic Church when suicide bombers targeted St John’s and Christ Church on March 15, 2015, claiming lives of at least 14 worshippers attending Sunday prayers. Bashir stopped one of the bombers and he detonated himself at the church gate. Bashir’s bravery saved many lives.
The Vatican has conferred the title ‘Servant of God’ upon him, which means he is now a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.
According to Vatican News, he is the first Pakistani to be nominated for this honour.
Akash Bashir has become Pakistan's first official candidate for sainthood. He died as a martyr while seeking to prevent a suicide bomber from entering a packed Catholic church in 2015.https://t.co/M2JbhLNO35
— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) February 1, 2022
Sebastian Francis Shaw, the Archbishop of Lahore, says Bashir was among those who came forward after police requested churches to engage volunteers from the community for protection.
Bashir was a student of Don Bosco Technical Institute. His mother Naz Bano says: “I had asked him not to volunteer as a guard. I told him how worried I was after the attack on a church in Peshawar. He used to say, ‘Won’t you like it if I’m defending a house of God?’”.
