Italian missionary bishop shot dead in northeast Kenya

Published: 2005-07-15

ISIOLO, Kenya (CNS) -- An Italian missionary bishop who had just learned Pope Benedict XVI had accepted his retirement was shot July 14 outside the Isiolo pastoral center. Bishop Luigi Locati, who would have celebrated his 77th birthday July 23, died at the Isiolo hospital about an hour after being shot. A guard walking with the bishop was wounded, news agencies reported. The bishop was head of the Apostolic Vicariate of Isiolo in northeast Kenya. The region recently has been the scene of violence between the Gabra and Borana ethnic groups over cattle and access to water. "Bishop Locati had received threats on his life and, for this reason, always moved with two guards in the evening," Consolata Father Eugenio Ferrari, director of the Pontifical Missionary Works in Kenya, told Fides, the Vatican's missionary news agency, July 15.

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