By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI was “deeply pained” by the news that the body of a kidnapped Iraqi archbishop had been found in a grave.
Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul was kidnapped Feb. 29 in an attack that left his driver and two bodyguards dead. The pope had made several public appeals for his release.
Catholic leaders in Iraq said March 13 that they had recovered the archbishop’s body after the kidnappers told them where they had buried him.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said Pope Benedict was informed immediately.
“We all had continued to hope and pray for his liberation,” Father Lombardi said. “Unfortunately, the most absurd and unjustified violence continues to weigh on the Iraqi people and particularly on the small Christian community, to whom the pope and all of us are particularly close in prayer and in solidarity at this moment of great pain.”
