AMERICA/COLOMBIA - Bishops' Conference denounces with profound grief the murder of two religious, an act that “goes against all the desires for reconciliation and peace that the Church has been preaching”

Bogota (Agenzia Fides) – In a statement of profound grief, the Bishops' Conference of Colombia denounced the murder of two members of the Redemptorist Order: Gabriel Fernando Montoya Tamayo (40 years) y Jesús Ariel Jiménez (45 years), which took place on the night of March 16 in La Primavera (Vichada).
“In condemning these crimes that once more grieve the Catholic Church and the entire country,” the text says, “we trust that the perpetrators of this violent sacrilegious act will be discovered. This act has gone against all the desires for reconciliation and peace that the Church has been preaching.”
The Bishops show their solidarity with Fr. Francisco Antonio Ceballos Escobar, Pro-Apostolic Vicar of Puerto Carreño, as well as the family members of the victims, the Redemptorist Missionaries, and the communities where the two religious served. They also exhort all the faithful “to pray for the two murdered priests and to ask the Lord, the Prince of Peace, to change the hearts of those who sow death in Colombia.”
The events took place in the sector of La Pascua, in La Primavera (Vichada), at over 500 km from Bogota, on the border with Venezuela, says the Superior of the Provincial House in Colombia's capital, Fr. Luis Carlos Jaime. The double murder was committed by a man who broke into the residence of the two priests at the Boarding School of La Pascua, and fired on the two while they were working on the Internet.
Fr. Gabriel Fernando Montoya had been the Director of the boarding school for a little over seven years and was in the process of handing over the reigns to Fr. Jesus Ariel Jimenez, who had recently arrived as the new Director. “We do not know the motives or if it was the act of an illegal armed group,” the Provincial Superior said, observing that neither the priests nor the community in the region had received previous threats. Authorities are currently investigating the circumstances of the deaths.
The Redemptorists, an order originally from Italy, have run the La Pascua Boarding School for 10 years, when they took over management from its founders, the French Monfortian Missionaries. In the establishment, there are 120 students of indigenous origin from the forests of eastern Colombia. Moreover, as the Congregation explained, they were already mourning the death of Bishop Ramon Mantilla Duarte, Bishop Emeritus of Ipiales (on the southern border with Ecuador), who died on Monday at 84 years of age in a clinic in Bogota after suffering from a serious illness.
The bodies of the two religious will be transferred to Aranzuzu Caldas and Manizales, their hometowns. (RG) (Agenzia Fides 18/3/2009)