Messahel: Algeria approves of Tibhirine monks' beatification in Oran

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APS Tuesday, 10 April 2018
ALGIERS- Algeria has expressed to the Vatican its approval of the beatification, in Oran (432-km west of Algiers), of Tibhirine’s monks assassinated in 1996 by a terrorist group in Medea (91-km south of Algiers),
Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel said Tuesday in Paris.
“Algeria has given approval of the monks’ beatification (in Oran) and the Vatican has been informed,” Messahel told French TV station France 24 on the sidelines of a visit to France.
The beatification, he added, “will take place in a few months, or a few weeks” in the capital of Algeria’s west.
Messahel stressed that Algeria “is not afraid of the truth,” adding that “everybody knows the circumstances in which they disappeared, the French know it and the Algerians know it.”
“Cooperation between Algerian and French judicial authorities is total and we have been working in full transparency.”
The seven French monks, assassinated in 1996 by a terrorist group in their monastery of Tibhirine in the province of Medea, have been recognized as martyrs by the Vatican ahead of their beatification, according to a decree published in January by the Vatican.
They are among a group of nineteen “martyrs” assassinated by a terrorist group between 1994 and 1996, including the bishop of Oran, Pierre Claverie. The nineteen martyrs are planned to be beatified, according to the decree.

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