Priest hacked to death in Colombia

September 14th, 2011 - 11:23 am ICT by IANS  

Bogota, Sep 14 (IANS/EFE) A priest in the northwestern town of Capurgana was found hacked to death, Colombia’s Catholic bishops conference said.

“(We express) our profound sadness upon confirming that…the life of a priest has been cut short, (one) who devoted himself to the service of the poorest in the Uraba region,” the Bishops Conference said Monday in a communique.

The Rev. Gualberto Oviedo Arrieta, 31, had been serving for about a year at the Nuestra Senora del Carmen Church in Capurgana.

With Oviedo Arrieta’s murder, the number of priests killed in Colombia so far this year stands at six, the bishops conference noted in the press release.

“(It is) a figure of great concern, which shows that state of violence and moral deterioration that our society is experiencing,” said Juan Vicente Cordoba, the conference’s general secretary.

Apparently, the priest was killed at his home Sunday night.

On Sep 1, the Rev. Reynel Restrepo Idarraga, the parish priest in Marmato in the northwestern province of Caldas, was shot multiple times - and killed - while riding on a motorcycle.

According to the bishops conference, between 1984 and September 2011, two bishops, 79 priests, eight monks and nuns, and three seminarians have been murdered in Colombia.

–IANS/EFE
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