Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo has announced that he will not participate in Sri Lanka’s independence-day celebrations on February 4, as a protest against the government’s failure to investigate the recent discovery of a hand grenade in a Catholic church.

Cardinal Ranjith has frequently complained that the government has not aggressively pursued an investigation of deadly bombings in Catholic churches on Easter Sunday, 2019. In the latest incident, Church officials are protesting that a church custodian has been held as a suspect, although evidence from security cameras clearly show that he was not responsible for leaving the grenade.