{"id":30913,"date":"2018-09-25T07:27:36","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T07:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=30913"},"modified":"2018-09-25T07:27:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T07:27:36","slug":"priests-are-the-new-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2018\/09\/25\/priests-are-the-new-target\/","title":{"rendered":"PRIESTS ARE THE NEW TARGET"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>PRIESTS ARE THE NEW TARGET<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Some days ago, the Society of African Missions (SMA) confirmed the kidnapping of Fr. Pierluigi Maccalli in Niger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cIt was a swift and coordinated attack. The abductors were familiar with the movements of Father Pierluigi and had chosen him as their victim.\u201d said\u00a0 Father Mauro Armanino of the Society of the African Missions (SMA) in Niger to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) about his confrere, Italian Father PierluigiMaccalli who was abducted last Monday, from the mission where he worked, some 125 km from the capital of Niger, Niamey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cMonday evening, Father John arrived here at our regional headquarters in Niamey, visibly traumatised\u201d, Father Armanino told ACN. \u201cHe himself lives in another small room, just a few metres away from that of Father Pierluigi, and he told us how the abductors had simply knocked on the door, seized the priest and then left again firing shots into the air.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">According to Father Armanino, one possible motive for the abductions is the desire to frighten the Christian community in one of the very small areas of Niger in which Christianity is the majority faith. \u201cThe fact that they have now attacked a Catholic priest for the first time shows that there are no longer any limits to their violence\u201d, he suggested.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">According to Father Armanino, the attackers were speaking the Peul ethnic language; the French name used to describe the Fulani tribesmen in Niger. Consequently, it is likely that Father Pierluigi is in the hands of the same Islamist pastoralists who have murdered thousands of people including Priests in nearby Nigeria.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In a related development, on Saturday morning, a group of masked men entered the home of Fr.\u00a0 Abelardo TovalAyesta, pastor of Saint John the Baptist of Sutiaba parish in the Diocese of Le\u00f3n, Nicaragua and savagely beat him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">According to the local media, these men struck him hard in the face and ribs, and even tried to suffocate him. And now, the priest is in danger of losing an eye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Catholic Multimedia Center (CCM) in Mexico records that Mexico is the most dangerous in Latin America for priests. \u201cFor the ninth year in a row, and even though no wars are being fought on our soil, our country is the nation with the highest number of murders of priests,\u201d said priest and journalist Father Sergio Omar Sotelo Aguilar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">He stressed that, in many cases, the death of a priest does not happen by coincidence or because of an unlucky encounter with ordinary criminals. The priest said: \u201cIn 80 per cent of the cases, the murderers use a modus operandi that includes everything from defamation to extortion, abduction to torture, kidnapping to murder.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">And in Nigeria, &#8220;It was an attempted robbery which ended badly&#8221;, according to Fr. Patrick Tor Alumuku, Director of the Social Communications of the Archdiocese of Abuja, when Fr. Jude Egbom who was shot dead on the evening of 10 September in Umuwala, Imo State in southern Nigeria.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;Fr. Egbom was at the barber\u2019s when some bandits entered. We do not know what happened but at some point the criminals fired some shots, killing the priest and seriously injured a seminarian who was with him&#8221;, says Fr. Patrick.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">All these happenings provoke questions; questions to which no one yet has an answer. It is almost impossible to understand why Priests should be so targeted. Why would people who have given their lives to the service of God for the betterment of humanity be targets of violence? Why should they be attacked by the very people they live for?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Now more than ever, they need our prayers, encouragement and support in every way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>ACN Malta<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PRIESTS ARE THE NEW TARGET Some days ago, the Society of African Missions (SMA) confirmed the kidnapping of Fr. Pierluigi Maccalli in Niger. \u201cIt was a swift and coordinated attack. The abductors were familiar with the movements of Father Pierluigi and had chosen him as their victim.\u201d said\u00a0 Father Mauro Armanino of the Society of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-newsletters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>PRIESTS ARE THE NEW TARGET - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2018\/09\/25\/priests-are-the-new-target\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PRIESTS ARE THE NEW TARGET - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"PRIESTS ARE THE NEW TARGET Some days ago, the Society of African Missions (SMA) confirmed the kidnapping of Fr. 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