Pope Offers Prayers for Mosque Shooting Victims

Pope Francis has offered prayers for "our Muslim brothers" killed in the attack against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Francis in his traditional Sunday prayer said that the mosque attack victims were added "to the pain wars and conflicts that don't cease to afflict humanity."

Francis led the faithful in a silent prayer "for our Muslim brothers who were killed" and renewed "an invitation to unite in prayer and gestures of peace to oppose hatred and violence."

The public prayers follow a telegram of condolences sent after the Friday attacks that claimed 50 victims in which the pontiff denounced "the senseless acts of violence."

A 28-year-old white supremacist from Australia is suspected in carrying out the worst terror attack in New Zealand's modern history.

Australia's Nine Network television, meanwhile, has broadcast an interview with a woman and a man who it says are a grandmother and an uncle of Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian man accused of carrying out the mass shootings at two New Zealand mosques.

The woman, identified as Marie Fitzgerald, says, "It's just so much for everything to take in that somebody in our family would do anything like this."

She adds, "It's only since he traveled overseas, I think, that the boy has changed completely ..."

The uncle, Terry Fitzgerald, says, "We say sorry, for the families over there, for the dead and the injured, yeah we just, can't think nothing else, just want to go home and hide."

The interview was conducted Sunday in the Australian city of Grafton in New South Wales state.