Catholic Priest Murdered in Cameroon, Dumped on Roadside

A Catholic priest has been murdered and then dumped on the roadside in Cameroon, Vatican News reported Wednesday.

Father Olivier Ntsa Ebode was found dead on March 1 in Obala, a municipality in the department of Lékié in the central region of Cameroon. The priest had been lured out his house at night by men asking him to come and minister to a sick family member.

According to local press reports, several men showed up at Father Olivier’s home in the night between February 28 and March 1, claiming that one of their relatives was not well and needed his religious services.

The priest agreed to get into the car with them to go to the place but on the way he was murdered and then thrown out of the vehicle.

His body was discovered in the early morning and was taken to the Obala morgue, where he was identified by his relatives.

Aggressions against the Catholic Church in the country are not uncommon. Last September, during an attack on a church in a village in the south-west of the country, armed men kidnapped five priests, a nun and two lay faithful and burned their church to the ground.

The church of St Mary in the village of Nchang, of the Mamfe Catholic diocese, was “burned by unknown armed men,” the Bamenda Provincial Episcopal Conference (BAPEC) said in a statement at the time.

It was with “great shock and utter horror” that we learnt of the burning down of the St Mary’s Catholic Church, Nchang and “the kidnapping of five priests, one religious sister and two lay faithful by unknown gunmen,” said the statement, signed by Archbishop Andrew Nkea, president of the Cameroon Bishops’ Conference.

The statement condemned the assault as part of a “wave of persecution” against the Church, adding that similar attacks have been aimed at Presbyterian and Baptist churches as well.

In 2019, a mob of some 100 members of the Islamic terror group Boko Haram raided and torched a church in the far north of Cameroon.

The Islamic extremists attacked the local church of the Union of Evangelical Churches in the village of Krawa Mafa, burning it to the ground.

Along with the church building, the jihadists burned 50 concessions, stole some 200 goats and sheep, and slaughtered one steer, reports stated.