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Thursday 28 March |
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Friends believe Jesuit priest kidnapped in Syria

Deacon Greg Kandra - published on 08/05/13

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From the Vatican Insider: 

Friday went by and still no news from the Jesuit priest Paolo Dall’Oglio who went off the grid on Monday. This means it is likely the priest was kidnapped. Over the past few days, activists have been claiming that Dall’Oglio had gone silent because he was involved in a mediation attempt. They said Dall’Oglio had told them to raise the alarm only if they had no news from him by Friday. And there has been no sign of him so far. A tweet sent today from Jan Bartha’s account shows concern is growing. Bartha is a researcher friend of Dall’Oglio’s living in Raqqa, a city in Northern Syria where the priest had arrived last Saturday from Turkey. On Sunday he spoke at a demonstration. “Unfortunately I can confirm that Fr. Paolo has officially been kidnapped by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS),” he wrote in response to one of Fr. Dall’Oglio’s fellow brothers who was asking him if he had heard from the priest. On Tuesday, Bartha claimed he had been with Fr. Dall’Oglio “up until five minutes ago.” Beyond this news, which is always hard to verify, there is something else that is causing even greater concern: developments in Northern Syria. Various sources claim that one of the reasons why Fr. Dall’Oglio went to the area was to try to heal the internal rift between Curds and Islamists, the war within a war between Assad’s opponents, which had been brewing for weeks and finally exploded into a violent conflict in recent days.

Read more. 

For more on Fr. Dall’Ogio, check out this post from last summer.

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