Rome: The worldwide Salesian congregation will offer special prayers on Holy Thursday for the release of an Indian priest abducted by Islamic militants in Yemen.
In a video message posted on the Salesian website on March 21 the congregation’s Rector Major Ángel Fernández Artime also urged his people to pray for four Missionaries of Charity nuns. Suspected IS militants on March 4 gunned them down along with their 12 helps at a home for the elderly in Aden, a southern port city in Yemen.
The militants then took away Salesian Fr Tom Uzhunnalil, who was the nuns’ chaplain. Salesian sources say they have no news about the priest’s whereabouts. Unconfirmed rumors claimed the 56-year-old priest was being tortured and that the militants would crucify him on Good Friday, March 25.
The Salesians plan to pray for the victims of sectarian violence in Yemen and the Indian confrere during the Holy Week that began on March 20. The congregation will conduct adoration of the Holy Eucharist on March 24, when the Church commemorates Christ’s Last Supper, reports heraldmalaysia.com.
Fr Uzhunnalil hails from Ramapuram, a village near Palai in the Kottayam district of Kerala. His uncle Mathew Uzhunnalil, who died in 2015, started the Salesian mission in Yemen. The nephew, a member of the Salesians’ Bangalore province, joined the mission four years ago.
Salesians have urged people to ignore baseless rumors circulating on social media networks and online sites in India about a plan drawn up by the kidnappers to torture, kill and crucify Fr Uzhunnalil on March 25 that coincides with Good Friday, which commemorates the passion and death of Christ. Nothing indicates that this is true, but it is fuelling fears about the Salesian’s fate.
For their part, the Salesian Family has responded by calling for an “intense moment of prayer on the evening of Holy Thursday, when we join with Jesus in the pain and loneliness of Gethsemane.”
This comes as “We continue to follow with pain and with great concern, what is happening to our brother Tom, a Salesian of Don Bosco, who disappeared and about whom we have no news,” writes the Rector Major in his message. At the same time, he expresses “our closeness, and our solidarity to his family”.