AFRICA/KENYA - “Fr. Giuseppe dedicated his entire life to education; for forty years he carried out his mission in Kenya”: the religious brother of a missionary killed today in Nairobi present his testimony to Fides

Nairobi (Agenzia Fides) - “Father Giuseppe was a good, generous person who dedicated his entire life to education,” Agenzia Fides was told by Fr. Giuseppe Ettorri of the General House of the Consolata Missionaries, in recalling Fr. Giuseppe Bertaina, who was killed this morning (January 16) in his office in Langata, in the Philosophical Institute of the Consolata Missionaries in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Fr. Bertain was the Rector and administrator of the Institute.
“I cam back from Kenya about a month ago. Fr. Giuseppe and I taught together in the Institute where he was killed,” says Fr. Ettorri. “According to what I have been told, several persons snook into the Institute during classes. The students and teachers were in the classrooms and did not notice anything out of the ordinary, because Fr. Giuseppe's office is on the second floor, while the classrooms are on the first floor. The murderers must have attacked him, beat him, bound him, and then gagged him. It is unknown whether he died as a result of suffocation from the gag or because he was strangled. Information is being released little by little, as the police are still in the process of investigation.”
Fr. Bertaina was a native of Madonna dll'Olmo, in the province of Cuneo (Italy), and had been ordained a priest in 1951. “He had been in Kenya since the 60s. He spent the whole time carrying out his mission here, except for a short time which he spent in South Africa, for studies,” said Fr. Ettorri. “Unfortunately these kinds of muggings are continually on the rise and often affect an alarming number of religious institutes and other works of the Church,” the missionary concluded. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 16/1/2009)