AFRICA/KENYA - Funeral for Fr. Giuseppe Bertaina, Consolata missionary killed in a Nairobi mugging, to be held on Friday, January 23

Monday, 19 January 2009

Nairobi (Agenzia Fides) – The funeral for Fr. Giuseppe Bertaina, the Consolata missionary killed on January 16 in his office in Langata of the Philosophical Institute of the Consolata Missionaries in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya (see Fides 16/1/2009), will be held on Friday, January 23.
On January 22, at 2:30pm, there will be a Mass held for the repose of his soul at the Consolata Shrine in Nairobi. That same evening, in the Seminary where the missionary spent the last years of his life, there will be a Rosary. Fr. Bertaina will be laid to rest in the “Madhari” Cemetery of Nyeri (220 km north of Nairobi), where the Consolata Missionaries have been buried since 1902.
Meanwhile, police investigations continue. It has been determined that Fr. Bertaina died from a lack of air as a result of the gag used by the criminals. The crime was committed by two men and a woman, who told the porter at the Seminary that they had an appointment with Fr. Bertaina, who was the Institute's Rector and Administrator. The seminarian who came upon the corpse of the missionary saw the three people come out of Fr. Bertaina's office and recognized one of them. It seems he was a former student who had left the Institute. Thanks to the seminarians alert, the security guards in the Insitute managed to stop the woman, who was found carrying several checkbooks of accounts belonging to the dead missionary as head of the Seminary. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 19/1/2009)


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