Over the weekend, ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Christians in Egypt and released a gruesome video showing them doing it. It’s just the latest in a horrifying series of barbaric murders carried out by the apocalyptic Muslim death cult. Pope Francis spoke out about the murders:

Today I read about the execution of those twenty-one or twenty-two Coptic Christians. Their only words were: “Jesus, help me!”. They were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians. You, my brother, in your words referred to what is happening in the land of Jesus. The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ. As we recall these brothers and sisters who died only because they confessed Christ, I ask that we encourage each another to go forward with this ecumenism which is giving us strength, the ecumenism of blood. The martyrs belong to all Christians.

The pope is a Christian, of course, and the leader of a huge percentage of all the world’s Christians. But why such a focus on the fact that the victims were Christian? Would it be any less tragic if they’d been atheists? Or other Muslims, as most of the victims of ISIS have been? These murders are horrifying not because the victims are Christians but because they are human beings, just as the use of blasphemy laws to oppress and kill people in so many Muslims is equally wrong whether the victims are Christian, atheist or the wrong brand of Muslim.