Akash Bashir, a 20-year-old volunteer security guard, sacrificed himself when he blocked a suicide bomber from entering St John’s Catholic Church in Lahore, Pakistan exactly 10 years ago, on Sunday, 15 March, 2015. As he locked his arms around the terrorist, moments before the explosion, his final words were: “I will die but I will not let you go in.”
His martyrdom saved the lives of more than a thousand faithful inside the church at the time. The Vatican declared him Servant of God in February 2022, paving the way for him to become the very first saint in the Muslim-majority country’s history.
