The Watchman

He Said Mass That Morning Standing In for Someone Else. He Was Found on Church Road.

Father Samuel Oyetoro filled in for a colleague on leave, said Mass, and was found on Church Road with machete wounds. Four days later gunmen took three people from a Sunday Mass in another state.

The parish priest at Ajaokuta was away on a two week leave. So Father Samuel Opeyemi Oyetoro took the Mass for him.

He finished. He went out. At about half past nine on the morning of July 29, the Kogi State Police Command was called to a road in Ajaokuta about the body of an unidentified man. Officers found him with severe machete wounds to the head. He was taken to ASCL Hospital and pronounced dead there.

It took time to work out who he was. The Diocese of Lokoja named him the next day.

He was 43. He had been a priest for fourteen years. No one has been arrested.

And four days later, in another state, seven gunmen walked into a Sunday Mass and took three people out of the building.

His Church Received 293 Dollars. The Court in Dak Lak Gave Him Seven and a Half Years.

The state counted the money to the last dong. It came to about 293 dollars, and it bought a pastor seven and a half years.

Two of the Three Came Home. It Took Thirteen Days for Anyone to Find Out.

Two of the three church leaders taken from Heiban were released on July 28 and August 1. The news took thirteen days to leave the Nuba Mountains, and it reached us after we published.

Engraving of a small hillside church in the Nuba Mountains, its door standing open, empty stools outside, smoke on the far ridge.

Three Church Leaders Are Gone From One Town in Sudan. Nobody Has Asked for Money.

Heiban lost three church leaders in nine days. In three months of abductions, no one has demanded a ransom for any of them. That absence is the story.

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