Priest shot dead in South Africa; Catholic bishops there decry ‘pandemic’ of murder

Father Paul Tatu Mothobi, a member the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata(CSS/Stigmatines) and former media and communications officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference(SACBC), was reportedly murdered last weekend in South Africa.

According to a notice from the congregation’s South Africa-based provincial secretary, Father Jeremia Thami Mkhwanazi, Tatu died on Saturday, April 27, “after sustaining a gunshot.”

Tatu, a native of Lesotho’s Archdiocese of Maseru, was ministering in South Africa’sArchdiocese of Pretoria. According to reports, his lifeless body was found with gunshot wounds in his car on a national road in South Africa, which runs from Cape Town through Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Polokwane to Beit Bridge, a border town with Zimbabwe.

In a Monday, April 29, statement, SACBC members expressed condolences, describing his killing as “not an isolated incident,” recalling the March 13 murder of Father William Banda, the Zambian-born member of St. Patrick’s Missionary Society(Kiltegan Fathers), who was shot in the sacristy of the Holy Trinity Cathedral of South Africa’s Tzaneen Diocese.

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