Missionary priest killed in Japan quake

(March 15, 2011) In a related development, among the tens of thousands of people, who have been killed by Japan’s earthquake is a Canadian missionary priest. Fr. Andre Lachapelle of the Quebec Foreign Mission Society died in Sendai, the city closest to the epicenter of the quake that hit 80 miles off the coast of Japan and sent a 33-foot tsunami inland. Fr.Peter Shiro Komatsu, chancellor of the Sendai Diocese, noted that the 76-year-old priest suffered a fatal shock from the disaster.
Fr.Guy Charbonneau, superior general of the mission society, reported that the "intense motion" of the earthquake gave the priest a heart attack, as he travelled from the Sendai cathedral back to his parish in Shiogama. The superior noted that the 10 other missionaries from his society serving in Japan are safe and working with their own parishioners on spiritual-related issues. Fr.Lachapelle, who is from Quebec, has been serving in Japan since 1961. He will be buried in Japan among the people he served.
Fr. Komatsu also reported that Bishop Martin Tetsuo Hiraga of Sendai was unharmed, but the situation around the diocese is still unknown.