A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times.
A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off.
Photo: Reuters
The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following,
Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number of people were stabbed.
Officers arrested a male and he is assisting police with inquiries.
The injured people suffered non-life threatening injuries and are being treated by New South Wales (NSW) ambulance paramedics.
It is the second stabbing incident in Sydney after six people were killed in a knife attack at a mall in Sydney’s Bondi area on Saturday.
NSW police are investigating if the suspected killer, Joel Cauchi, deliberately targeted women and children as the NSW government announces a coronial inquiry into the stabbings.
While a motive is not yet known, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb yesterday confirmed investigators would look at if Cauchi had been targeting women and children specifically.
Webb said videos of the incident that had quickly spread online “speak for themselves.”
“It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that seems to be an area of interest — that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men,” she said.
Police have also been speaking with Cauchi’s family and people who knew him from Queensland and who may have interacted with him in NSW before the rampage.
Cauchi’s Queensland-based father, Andrew, said his mentally unwell son had been a “very sick boy” since he was a teenager and the family had done “everything in my power” to help him.
“He is my son and I am loving a monster,” he said.
“To you, he is a monster. To me, he was a very sick boy,” he said.
Andrew said his son had been taken off medication, “because he was doing so well, but then he just took off to Brisbane.”
His mother, Michele, said her heart went out to those her son had hurt.
“He was brought up in love,” she said.
“If he was in his right mind he would be absolutely devastated with what he has done,” she said.
Cauchi’s interactions with police and other government agencies, including medical professionals in both states, will be looked at closely when a coronial inquiry into the incident begins following an US$18 million injection from the state government.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has also ordered a review of the powers held by security guards, while ruling out handing them firearms or stun guns.
“Families are in mourning today, lives have been devastated as a result of these criminal actions and we think about those families,” he said.
“The people who were killed were ... innocent people who had their entire lives ahead of them. The community is devastated in the knowledge of their loss, whether we were personally known to those who were killed or not,” he said.
Floral tributes continued to grow outside the eastern suburbs shopping center that also serves as a service and transport hub for residents and tourists heading to Sydney’s famous beaches, including Bondi.
The Sydney Opera House was last night lit up with a black ribbon to mourn and honor the victims.
The families of the six Sydney stabbing victims are being offered time to walk through the shopping center where their loved ones were murdered on Saturday before it reopens to the public.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS