One hundred percent of respondents personally know someone who has served in the military.

Like Saint Francis, the pope said, “each of us is called to follow in his footsteps by becoming a peacemaker, an ‘artisan’ of peace.”

He has by heart the gondolas of Venice, can summon a teakwood dhow.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe claimed he and other top government officials were not told about a possible threat and told local media “we must look into why adequate precautions were not taken.”

Since the end of the nation's 26-year civil war, in which the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group from the ethnic Tamil minority, sought independence from ethnic Sinhala Buddhist majority Sri Lanka, the country has seen sporadic ethnic and religious violence, but the scale of Sunday's bloodshed recalled the worst days of the war,

Pope Francis prayed for victims of the attacks in Sri Lanka and called for peace, highlighting 18 conflicts around the world.