Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) - The two missionaries remembered by Pope Benedict XVI in the recitation of the Regina Caeli on Sunday, April13 are Fr. Brian Thorp, Mill Hill missionary of 77 years of age, whose lifeless corpse was found by a cleaning lady in the parish house in Lamu, Archdiocese of Mombasa (Kenya), apparently the victim of an armed attack and Brother Joseph Douet, of the Order of the Brothers of Saint Gabriel, 62 years-old and murdered April 8 in Katako, in Guinea Conakry. “We give thanks to God for these our brothers, who give themselves without reserve to pastoral ministry, sometimes sealing their fidelity to Christ with the sacrifice of their lives, as happened yesterday to two religious assassinated in Guinea and Kenya. We offer them our grateful admiration and prayers for the repose of their souls.”
Fr. Thorp was born January 30, 1931, in Yorkshire Bridge in Bamford, Derbyshire (England), the fourth of five children. After a life working as a carpenter and construction worker, following the death of his youngest brother in 1967, Brian decided to reflect on his future. The following year, he entered the program for studies with the Mill Hill Missionaries. He made temporal vows in June 1970 and perpetual vows June 29, 1972. He carried out his first mission from 1973-1976 in Basankusu (in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo), where he worked on various projects for building structures for the mission. He later worked in the missions in Kenya and Uganda. In 1999, Fr. Brian was named parish pastor in Lamu, where he worked on the reconstruction of the parish buildings.
Brother Joseph Douet was originally from Pin-en-Mauges, France. Following a religious formation in Botissandeau, Vandea and university studies in Angers, he became professor in Cholet. In 1971, he began the mission in Senegal. He was later transferred to Guinea where, in 1995, he founded a mission in Ourous and later a school in Kotako. Precisely in his school was where he was attacked by thugs who bound him and placed a sack on his head, suffocating him. The motive appears to have been theft. Br. Douet was burried in Kotako, as he had previously requested. The funeral was presided by Archbishop Vincent Koulibali of Conakry, the country’s capital. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 14/4/2008 righe 29, parole 375)
