BUJUMBURA, Burundi — The Vatican ambassador to Burundi was shot and killed Dec. 29 by guerrilla rebels. He was riding in a car about 30 miles south of the capital city of Bujumbura, according to wire reports.
Monsignor Michael Courtney, 58, died in surgery after being shot in the head, shoulder and a limb, according to the Associated Press. A priest traveling with him was slightly injured, while two others escaped harm.
Burundi Army officials blamed the attack on Hutu fighters from the National Liberation Forces, who have refused to sign a peace pact with the government in the nation’s decade-old civil war, the Reuters news agency reported.
Courtney, a native of Ireland, was shot near Minago when his car came under fire from a nearby hillside. The Misna news agency described the circumstances of the attack as “still not completely clear.”
The Vatican refrained from comment on the assassination until Courtney’s family could be notified. Catholics make up about 65 percent of the East Central African nation’s population of 6.5 million.
Courtney joined the Vatican’s diplomatic corps in 1976 and served in posts in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal, India, Yugoslavia, Cuba and Egypt.
Before being named to Burundi in 2000, he spent five years as a special envoy in Strasbourg, France, monitoring the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, according to the Associated Press.
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