Akash Bashir

When a suicide bomber attempted to enter a St. John's Catholic Church on March 15 in Lahore, Pakistan in 2015, a 20-year-old volunteer security guard blocked him. "I will die but I will not let you go in," he told the terrorist armed with explosives. The attacker then set off a bomb, immediately killing himself and the man now recognized as a candidate for canonization: Akash Bashir. Because of his actions, the church, with more than one thousand parishioners inside, was saved from a direct blast. Terrorist group TTP-JA later claimed the attacks that killed seventeen people and injured more than seventy others. These numbers might have been greater if Bashir had not guarded St. John's Catholic Church.

Bashir's mother, Naz Bano, said that her son first joined the volunteer security guards at their church in November 2014. "All denominations were recruiting youth following the 2013 suicide bomb attack at All Saints Church in Peshawar City," she said. "Akash used to discuss it with his friends and kept insisting for three months that he wanted to guard the church. He was ready to sacrifice his life if God gave him a chance to protect others." She remembered hearing explosions the day that he died. "The streets were filled with people," she recalled. "Hearing the second blast, I rushed with my youngest son towards the Catholic church." Eventually, she found whom she was looking for: her son. "I was searching for Akash among the boys standing near the church gate," she said. "But he was lying down in the dirt. His right arm was almost ripped off. I could not believe my eyes." Today, she said, another one of her sons, Arsalan, now guards the church "to take the place of his brother." "We did not stop him," she said. "We cannot prevent our sons from serving the Church. It is their choice." She described her son, Akash, as a "part of my heart." "But our happiness is greater than our grief. He was a simple boy who died in the path of the Lord and saved the priest and worshippers. People love him. Akash is already our saint."

In 2022, Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore announced that the Vatican accepted Akash Bashir as a Servant of God, the title given to a candidate for the sainthood while his or her life and work is closely examined. The archbishop made the announcement about Bashir, on the feast of St. John Bosco. Father Francis Gulzar, vicar general of Lahore archdiocese, responded by calling it a "great day for the Catholic Church in Pakistan. He offered his life as a sacrifice to save the lives of the Christian community at St. John's Catholic Church. He is the first Pakistani Christian who has been raised to the rank of the Holy People of God."

Akash Bashir's father, Bashir Emmanuel, said "This is a very big honour for us. Akash symbolizes the strength of the Christian faith in our country. I pray for the clearance of all steps to sainthood."