Vatican Agency says at least 37 church workers killed in 2009

(January 02, 2010) An uptick of violence against Catholic Church workers in the Americas contributed to almost doubling the number of missionaries who were murdered in 2009 compared to the previous year, the Vatican's Fides agency said. The agency said 37 people working for the church were killed in 2009, up from 20 people in 2008. It is also the highest number of deaths in the last 10 years, it added. Each year, Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, publishes a list of pastoral workers who died violently. The 2009 list was released December 30. The list included one priest each from India and Philippines. Fr Mukalel James, 39, was found dead near Mangalore, in southern India on July 29, 2009. His body was found in the countryside by some parishioners on the following day after the young priest had failed to return to his parish in the Syro-Malabar diocese of Belthangady. Fr Cecilio Lucero, Filipino, 48, was killed on September 6, 2009 by a group of armed men in the Northern Samar province, south of the capital, Manila Philippines. Of those killed in 2009, 30 were priests, two were religious sisters, two were seminarians and three were lay volunteers. Twenty-three of them were killed in the Americas: six in Brazil, six in Columbia, three in Mexico, two in Cuba, two in El Salvador, two in the United States, and one each in Honduras and Guatemala. Four pastoral workers were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, another four in South Africa, two in Kenya, and one each in Burundi, India, the Philippines, and France. Many of the deaths were the result of a robbery ending in murder.