VATICAN (CWNews.com) -- Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's top foreign-affairs officer, has criticized the slow reaction of the international community to the wave of massacres in East Timor.
In an interview with the Italian weekly Famiglia Cristiana, the Vatican's Secretary for Relations with States said: "One must deplore the fact that, in general, there is a certain slowness and incapacity to find the quick-response mechanisms to prevent and resolve tragedies of this magnitude."
While saying that the UN decision to intervene in East Timor was a "thoroughly positive" development, the archbishop underlined the urgent need for a rapid deployment on international peacekeeping forces. He argued that the UN must be better prepared to intervene in such cases immediately.
Meanwhile the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano paid tribute to the Catholic religious workers who had done their best to help the suffering people of East Timor-- sometimes even when they themselves were threatened by the marauding militia bands. The Vatican newspaper mentioned Sister Erminia Cazzaniga and her volunteer companions, who were slaughtered on September 26 while they were helping refugees. L'Osservatore Romano called their work a display of "true heroism," explaining that they were Christians who "renounced nothing, remained faithful, abandoned no one."
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