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Priest shot dead in South Africa; Catholic bishops there decry ‘pandemic’ of murder

Father Paul Tatu Mothobi, a member the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata (CSS/Stigmatines) and former media and communications officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), was reportedly murdered last weekend in South Africa.

According to a notice from the congregation’s South Africa-based provincial secretary, Father Jeremia Thami Mkhwanazi, Tatu died on Saturday, April 27, “after sustaining a gunshot.”

Tatu, a native of Lesotho’s Archdiocese of Maseru, was ministering in South Africa’s Archdiocese of Pretoria. According to reports, his lifeless body was found with gunshot wounds in his car on a national road in South Africa, which runs from Cape Town through Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Polokwane to Beit Bridge, a border town with Zimbabwe.

In a Monday, April 29, statement, SACBC members expressed condolences, describing his killing as “not an isolated incident,” recalling the March 13 murder of Father William Banda, the Zambian-born member of St. Patrick’s Missionary Society (Kiltegan Fathers), who was shot in the sacristy of the Holy Trinity Cathedral of South Africa’s Tzaneen Diocese.

Read more at Catholic News Agency 

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