A young Zambian missionary serving in South Africa was shot dead while preparing to celebrate Mass.
Fr William Banda of St Patrick’s Missionary Society (the Kiltegan Fathers) was reportedly murdered on the morning of 13 March, by a “well-dressed man” in the sacristy of the Diocese of Tzaneen’s Holy Trinity Cathedral.
Witnesses said the murderer shot Banda twice and left at speed in a car waiting for him outside the cathedral. The priest was 37-years-old.
Fr Banda began his formation with the Kiltegan Fathers in 2006 and was ordained a priest 2016. He had worked in the Diocese of Tzaneen since his ordination.
Fr Joseph McCullough SPS, the society’s district leader in Britain, told The Tablet that its members were shaken by his “brutal death”.
“The way that William was so brutally and wickedly killed is very painfully felt here and leaves us all searching for answers,” he said. Reports last week had not established the motive for the attack.
In a statement announcing Fr Banda’s funeral would take place in the Holy Trinity Cathedral on 23 March, the Kiltegan Fathers described him as “a loving priest, approachable and friendly” who “ministered with prayerful humility, diligence, wisdom and courage”.
The murder followed the deaths of three Coptic Orthodox monks on 12 March in the Monastery of St Mark and St Samuel the Confessor, in Cullinan, east of Pretoria.
Fr Takla Moussa, Fr Minah ava Marcus and Fr Youstos ava Marcus were found with stab wounds, while a fourth priest, who survived, alleged that he was hit by an iron rod before fleeing and hiding. An Egyptian member of the Church was arrested as a suspect.
A statement from the Coptic Church’s Archdiocese of South Africa said: “Our pain and sadness, no amount [of] words can express, but we know that they rejoice in paradise in the bosom of our Fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
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