The slain bishop was a 54-year-old Consolata missionary in Mozambique. Few details are yet known about the crime.
Pope Leo XIV said he joins in prayer with the people of Mozambique after one of their bishops, Bishop Osório Citora Afonso of Quelimane, was shot and killed on Saturday morning.
In a statement, the Pope spoke of this "time of bewilderment, asking the Lord to grant them consolation, to keep every man and woman in His love, and to stay the hand of the violent.”
The slain bishop was a 54-year-old Consolata missionary. Few details are yet known about the crime.
Investigation underway
Bishop Citora Afonso was found dead on the morning of June 6 at his episcopal residence in Quelimane, having been fatally shot in the chest.
Aid to the Church in Need reported the death shortly afterward, noting that no details about the crime have yet been found, and no arrests have been made.
Vatican service
Known affectionately to many as “Don Osório,” the bishop served as an official at the Vatican's Dicastery for Evangelization from 2017 to 2023.
He was also a close collaborator of the Fides News Agency, with which he continued to share information until only a few weeks ago about the life of the local Church and the grave situation of violence and conflict affecting Mozambique.
The murder is yet another tragedy for the Church in Mozambique, which is already grappling with terrorist violence in the north of the country, particularly in Cabo Delgado Province.
At the end of April in that province, an attack resulted in the destruction of key religious and social infrastructure, including the parish church, missionaries’ residences, and a small community school, leaving the mission largely destroyed.
The bishop was killed in the Zambezia province, in the center-east of the nation.
Pope Francis visited the nation in 2019. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, went to Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, at the end of 2025 on a visit that was brief, risky, and unmistakably symbolic. In a region scarred by jihadist violence since 2017, the Vatican’s Secretary of State came with a message he repeated plainly to local Christians: You are not alone.
