The Bishop who was stabbed in an attack on the Christ the Good Shepherd Church in western Sydney has delivered a fiery sermon on his return to the pulpit.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was attacked on April 15 while he was preaching to his members and a video of the attack went viral (video).
Two weeks after the attack, the Bishop returned to the pulpit carrying a gold cross and sporting a white eye patch.
Speaking from the pulpit, he said he could not “fathom” how freedom of speech could not be possible in a democratic country.
“I say to our beloved, the Australian government, and our beloved Prime Minister, the honourable Mr Albanese, I believe in one thing and that is the integrity and the identity of the human being,” he said.
“This human identity, this human integrity, is a God-given gift, no one else.
“Every human being has the right to their freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”
He said Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Atheists had the right to express their beliefs.
“Also the Christians have the right to express their beliefs, and for us to say, that free speech is dangerous, that free speech cannot be possible in a democratic country, I’m yet to fathom this. I’m yet to fathom this. We should be able as civilised human beings, as intellectuals, we should be able to criticise, to speak, and maybe, at some certain times, we may sound, or we may come across offensive to some degree, but we should be able to say, ‘I should not worry for my life to be exposed to threat or to be taken away’.
“A non Christian can criticise my faith, can attack my faith. I will say one thing, ‘may God forgive you, and may God bless you.
“This is a civilised way, an intellectual way, to approaching such events.
“But for us, to say that because of this freedom of speech, it is causing dramas and dilemmas, therefore everything should be censored, then where is democracy?
“Then where is humanity, where is integrity, where are the morals, where are the ethics, where are the principles, where are the values which the Western world, more so, have been fighting for human rights, which is the value of the human.”
A debate around the proper limits of free expression has erupted in the country in the wake of the Wakeley terror attack.
A 16-year-old boy stabbed the bishop while he was giving a live-streamed sermon, with video of the violence quickly spreading online.
Australian eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant has ordered social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to take down certain posts commenting on the attack.
See the Bishop speaking in the video below.