(OSV News) — An elderly Salesian missionary priest was killed Dec. 12 in Congo under unclear circumstances.
Father Léopold Feyen, 82, was found dead in his room in Masina, a municipality in the province of the capital, Kinshasa. Some media reports said his body had several stab wounds.
“He was killed by people who knew him very well. That’s why he could allow them to enter his room. What I gather is that he was stabbed, and not shot,” Father Innocent Halerimana Maganya, a Congolese priest who is a director of the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue and Islamic Studies at Tangaza University in Nairobi, told OSV News.
“He had just returned from Belgium, and I think the killers thought he had a lot of money. He was working with people who live on the streets,” the priest said.
Congo, a mineral-rich country in central Africa, is ravaged by deadly conflict in the eastern part of the country which spans an area the size of Western Europe, with an estimated population of more than 100 million people. While several Catholic priests have been killed in the war-torn regions such as North Kivu, Father Feyen was killed in a relatively peaceful region near the capital.
Known as Koko Pol, Father Feyen ministered at the parish of Mary Help of Christians.
According to reports, the priest was struggling with some health challenges due to his age, and was no longer involved in demanding tasks for the parish. However, he still managed the gardens and cultivated fruits and vegetables for nearby Catholic schools.
Deacon Ward Ceyssens of Stelimo, a Belgian organization which supports missionaries, told VRT news that he visited Father Feyen recently and that while he “no longer had parish duties,” he still “made himself available to the community. He provided care for young people having a hard time and worked on urban gardens for the local school.”
More than 40 years of ministry in the DRC
Father Feyen was born in Hechtel, Belgium, in 1941. In 1961, he made his first profession as a Salesian of Don Bosco, and in 1967 he took his final vows.
The priest had served in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for nearly 40 years, directing his energies into a technical school in Lubumbashi, which offers courses including carpentry, auto mechanics, construction, welding and agriculture.
“In the many years of work he dedicated his life to young people, especially the least, the abandoned, with the heart of the Good Shepherd, becoming, like Don Bosco, ‘Father, Teacher and Friend,'” reported Agenzia Info Salesiana, a communications agency of the Salesian order.
The killing of Father Feyen is the latest sign of violence against clergy in the troubled country.
In August 2022, Father Godefroid Pembele, a priest of St. Joseph Mukasa Parish in Kikwit, western Congo, died following injuries sustained in a rebel attack. In February 2022, Father Richard Masivi was assassinated in North Kivu after participating in celebrations for the World Day for Consecrated Life. In 2021, the storming of the residence of Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu in Kinshasa, by unknown attackers, drew to attention the security risks faced by Catholic clerics.
Calls for stability amid elections
On Dec. 15, Bishop A. Elias Zaidan of the Maronite Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, called for peaceful and credible elections in Congo. The Dec. 20 elections will decide on who will be the country’s next president. After years of political instability and coups, the country observed the first peaceful transfer of power in 2019 between former President Joseph Kabila and current President Felix Tshisekedi, who is seeking reelection.
Opposition parties suspect the government of orchestrating electoral fraud, accusing it of restricting freedoms and democratic space. The government rejects these accusations, BBC reported.
Bishop Zaidan said he joined the Congolese bishops’ conference in their call “for free and fair elections.”
“For years the people of the Congo have worked to build a democratic country, in which the Congolese can participate freely and effectively in the political process of self-governance,” Bishop Zaidan said. “The local Catholic Church has been in the forefront of these efforts to ensure free and fair elections. Our committee has been privileged to walk in solidarity with the Church in the Congo to support their efforts.”
The U.S. Maronite bishop called “on all people of good will in the Congo to work tirelessly to hold peaceful and credible elections” and to international partner countries and organizations monitoring the elections to “support the Congolese bishops’ efforts to ensure that the voice of the people is accounted for and fully respected.”
Nearly 40 million Congolese voters are expected to go to the polls Dec. 20. “In this season of Advent, may the promises of Our Emmanuel, be among the people of the DRC — that peace and the furtherance of the common goodwill flourish,” Bishop Zaidan wrote.
