26 priests, religious, lay pastoral workers slain in 2011

December 30, 2011

Twenty-six pastoral workers--including 18 priests, 4 sisters, and 4 laity--were killed in 2011, according to the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

Seven were killed in Colombia, five in Mexico, three in India, two in Burundi, and one each in Brazil, Paraguay, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Tunisia, Kenya, the Philippines, and Spain.

The Fides news agency commented:

"The true imitation of Christ is love," said the Holy Father on December 26. And this was certainly the rule of life for Sister Angelina, who was killed in South Sudan by militants of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) while she was bringing medical aid to refugees; and also for Maria Elizabeth Macías Castro, of the Scalabrinian Lay Movement of Nuevo Laredo (Mexico), who worked for a newspaper and was committed to assisting migrants, she was kidnapped and murdered by drug dealers; even for Father Fausto Tentorio, Italian missionary of PIME, priest in Mindanao (Southern Philippines), who devoted his life to the service of literacy and development of indigenous people; or even for the layman Rabindra Parichha, killed in Orissa in eastern India: former itinerant catechist was very involved in the legal field and a promoter of human rights.

Fides’ list does not only include missionaries ad gentes in the strict sense, but all pastoral care workers who died violent deaths. We do not propose to use the term "martyrs," since it is up to the Church to judge their possible merits and also because of the scarcity of available information in most of cases, with regard to their life and even the circumstances of their death.

 

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Further information:

• THE NAMES OF PASTORAL WORKERS, BISHOPS, PRIESTS, MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS AND LAY CATHOLICS, KILLED IN THE YEAR 2011 (Fides)