A priest and a catechist have been murdered in the Goilala Mountains in the Central province of Papua New Guinea.
Fr Jerry Inao and the communion minister, Benedict, were shot dead at Kamulai on Sunday 4th May.
Fr Jerry, a native of the area and a member of the Kunimeipa tribe, was in his early forties was ordained a priest only on 16 August 2013.
He had been shot through the heart at close range.
Both deaths were payback killings.
This cycle of payback killings has been going on in the Kunimeipa area for more than four years.
It was not until Wednesday that a at teacher from Guarimeipa primary reported the deaths.
The teacher had had walked down from Guarimeipa to Zania were there is a hot-spot for Digicel mobile reception.
On Friday Brian Cahill MSC and the Vicar General of the diocese of Bereina, Fr Paul Guy travelled by helicopter to Olivi with the police.
On arrival they were greeted by the villagers who told them Fr Gerry’s body had been buried the day before inside the Olivi church.
They had carried the body from near Kamulai where it had been left on the ground and waited with it at Olivi until they couldn’t wait any longer, as it needed to be buried due to the state of decomposition.
Fr. Guy blessed the grave, and together with the local villagers gathered, recited prayers for the dead over the grave.
Afterwards the catechist gave the police a thorough report on what had happened.
Reports coming into the main Goilala government station of Tapini and elsewhere since Fr Gerry’s death were that seven others have been killed since 4 May.
Read Fr Brian Cahill’s first hand report and look at photographs
Source
Report and photographs supplied by Fr Giorgi Licini