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**Nigerian priest stabbed blocks from St. Peter’s Square
**By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) – A professor of theology at a Rome university and founder of a Nigerian religious order was attacked and stabbed just outside his residence, a few blocks from St. Peter’s Square.
According to Italian news reports, Nigerian Father John Egbulefu, 55, was walking home around 10 p.m. June 8 when a motor scooter sped by him and circled back around. The unknown assailant reportedly drove his scooter onto the sidewalk, stopped alongside the priest, then attacked him with a knife, the June 9 reports said.
“He was in very serious condition when they brought him to the hospital last night,” said Consolata Father Giovanni Marconcini, general secretary of Urbanian University, where Father Egbulefu has taught dogmatic theology for nearly 20 years.
“He was hit in the colon. He lost lots of blood, but they operated on him last night, and now he is in stable condition,” Father Marconcini told Catholic News Service June 9, just a few hours after visiting the Nigerian priest in the hospital.
In the early 1990s Father Egbulefu founded a Nigerian religious order called the Congregation of Christ the Emmanuel. Father Marconcini said the Emmanuelite priest has authored several books and has taught sacraments and liturgy since the late 1980s at Urbanian University, where Catholic missionaries are educated in Rome.
Father Marconcini said that during his June 9 hospital visit Father Egbulefu told him he thought the attack “was intentional” and specifically aimed at him.
Father Egbulefu had been walking back to his Vatican residence with another religious, “a nuncio,” at the time of the assault, Father Marconcini said.
The assailant “purposely drove up” to the Nigerian priest, stabbed him and “quickly sped away,” the general secretary told CNS.
“People don’t just carry knives around with them” without a reason, he said.
“We are all shocked by this event,” he added.
Source : catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503421.htm
**By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) – A professor of theology at a Rome university and founder of a Nigerian religious order was attacked and stabbed just outside his residence, a few blocks from St. Peter’s Square.
According to Italian news reports, Nigerian Father John Egbulefu, 55, was walking home around 10 p.m. June 8 when a motor scooter sped by him and circled back around. The unknown assailant reportedly drove his scooter onto the sidewalk, stopped alongside the priest, then attacked him with a knife, the June 9 reports said.
“He was in very serious condition when they brought him to the hospital last night,” said Consolata Father Giovanni Marconcini, general secretary of Urbanian University, where Father Egbulefu has taught dogmatic theology for nearly 20 years.
“He was hit in the colon. He lost lots of blood, but they operated on him last night, and now he is in stable condition,” Father Marconcini told Catholic News Service June 9, just a few hours after visiting the Nigerian priest in the hospital.
In the early 1990s Father Egbulefu founded a Nigerian religious order called the Congregation of Christ the Emmanuel. Father Marconcini said the Emmanuelite priest has authored several books and has taught sacraments and liturgy since the late 1980s at Urbanian University, where Catholic missionaries are educated in Rome.
Father Marconcini said that during his June 9 hospital visit Father Egbulefu told him he thought the attack “was intentional” and specifically aimed at him.
Father Egbulefu had been walking back to his Vatican residence with another religious, “a nuncio,” at the time of the assault, Father Marconcini said.
The assailant “purposely drove up” to the Nigerian priest, stabbed him and “quickly sped away,” the general secretary told CNS.
“People don’t just carry knives around with them” without a reason, he said.
“We are all shocked by this event,” he added.
Source : catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503421.htm