SRI LANKAN CATHOLIC IDENTITY AND THE 2019 EASTER BOMBINGS

For the Sri Lankan Catholic community, getting to the truth behind the 2019 Easter bombings has posed a number of discursive and political challenges, especially when evidence emerged of government complicity in the attacks.  The paper first presents an overview of the history of Catholicism in Sri Lanka, then focuses on the Catholic response to the bombings.  Centering on the public pronouncements of Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, the paper argues that what has emerged in the Catholic response is what could be called a Sri Lankan nationalism of the common good, which is simultaneously prophetic and, interestingly, non-sectarian except concerning one particular issue that has vexed Sri Lankan Catholicism just as it has Sri Lankan society as a whole