Catholic priest "kidnapped" ON Saturday morning in Kinshasa

A Catholic priest was “kidnapped” Saturday morning in Kinshasa by police and taken to an unknown destination, church sources said, as relations between the church and the church are tense. Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. h3>

“Father Sebastien was kidnapped just after morning Mass by police officers,” a nun from St. Robert parish told the AFP in the peripheral commune of N’Sele in the far east of Kinshasa.

During the Mass, an unidentified man “filmed the priest” using a mobile phone and at the exit, “a police vehicle arrived, the police went down, they began to beat the priest, they threw it into their jeep and left with it, “said another nun, witnessing the event.

Religious passion, Father Sebastien Yebo is the parish priest of Saint Robert since August 2017.

When questioned by AFP, the police did not react immediately.

This incident took place while Kinshasa and the Church were at loggerheads and has since banned Catholic marches on December 31 and January 21 against the continued holding of President Joseph Kabila.

At least 15 people have been killed, according to the UN, in the crackdown on these marches – organized at the call of a group of Catholic laypeople who asks Kabila to declare publicly that he will not stand for re-election. new mandate.

The Congolese authorities reported a much smaller number of deaths.

The political climate is very tense in the DRC where President Kabila’s second and last term ended on December 20, 2016.

Elections scheduled for the end of December 2017 were finally postponed until December 2018

AFP