Police in Cameroon launched an investigation into the death of Fr Christophe Komla Badjougou, a priest of Togolese origin shot dead in the capital Yaoundé.
The priest was shot at 7:30pm on 7 October in front of the gate of the Missionaries of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM) house in the Mvolyé neighbourhood, where he was to spend the night. Fr Komla, who served in a diocese in Cameroon’s Far North region, was staying in Yaoundé while travelling to Italy where he was to undertake a year of training.
Police Commissioner Francis Ekema, head of the Third District Police Station in Yaoundé, said in a statement that surveillance footage showed that the priest had arrived at the gate of the CICM house in Mvolyé on a motorcycle taxi. While he was trying to pay for his ride, two assailants arrived on a motorcycle, shot the priest several times and stole his bag.
Bishop Barthélemy Yaouda Hourgo of Yagoua said he was “shocked and pained” by the killing, and voiced his spiritual solidarity with Fr Komla’s family as well as his friends and brothers.
Mgr Paul Nyaga, the secretary general of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon, told The Tablet that the murder was a grim reminder that “the proclamation of the Gospel goes along with suffering, with hatred, with persecution”.
Fr Komla was ordained a priest in 2013 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Trinity in Atakpamé, in Togo. He was serving in the Diocese of Yagoua under a Fidei Donum arrangement, having previously been the parish priest at the Church of Saints Pierre and Paul in Zouzoui, and had also served at the major seminary in Douala.
His killing was the latest in a series of clergy murders in Cameroon, where at least 15 priests have been killed since 1982.
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