_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Missionary kidnapped
Rebels or ordinary outlaws?
An Italian missionary priest was abducted by eight gunmen as he celebrated Mass in the southern Philippines on October 17. Father Giuseppi Piarantoni was kidnapped in the town of Dimataling, near the spot where Muslim rebels are holding an American missionary couple. Abu Sayyaf, the Muslim rebel group with links to Osama bin Laden, was initially believed to be behind the kidnapping.

“The gunmen barged into the church at around 7 pm and took away the priest,” southern military commander Lieutenant-General Roy Cimatu told reporters in Zamboanga. The gunmen, with their captive, fled in a speedboat.

Abu Sayyaf has kidnapped a number of foreigners, and particularly Christian missionaries, in the Mindanao region, where they want to establish an Islamic homeland. The Filipino army has been strongly pursuing the rebels with 7,000 soldiers combing the heavily forested regions, seeking their hideouts.

But one bishop in the southern Philippines told the Fides news service that the kidnapping was the work of common bandits, not Muslim guerillas. “Faher Giuseppe Pierantoni was not kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf group, and the kidnapping has nothing to do with the present international crisis,” said Bishop Zacharias Jimenez of Pagadian, the diocese in which the kidnapping occurred.

Bishop Jimenez disclosed that the Sacred Heart missionary order had been previously threatened with kidnapping. Authorities were able to thwart that earlier attempt, the bishop said, because “the local bands of criminals are known to the police.” Bishop Jimenez expressed certainty that the kidnapping of Father Pierantoni was carried out by similar criminal groups, rather than the Abu Sayyaf guerillas. The bishop did concede that a criminal gang might be working in conjunction with Abu Sayyaf, and might even turn over the priest to the guerillas as part of a financial deal.

One week after the abduction, Philippine officials receive a ransom demand of 8.3 million pesos ($159,615) from the purported kidnappers. Officials said that they were trying to verify that the ransom note was authentic. Meanwhile military officials said that they were continuing their efforts to break up the Abu Sayyaf organization, hoping that they would be able to free Father Pierantoni without paying ransom. One military official told reporters that the army felt a sense of urgency about their task. “We have received reports that the priest is very weak because he is suffering from dehydration,” he said.

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