A march for the relase of Father Pier Luigi Maccalli.
Credit: Society of African Missions A missionary priest has expressed his “joy” and “surprise” after a video was released showing that his brother, who was kidnapped in 2018, is still alive.
Fr Walter Maccalli was relieved after discovering the news from watching a 23-second video showing his sibling, Fr Pierluigi Maccalli, and another man last week.
The priest told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need he was overjoyed to see that his brother had not been killed by his jihadist kidnappers.
“It’s great news,” he said, adding “and we are delighted and hopeful that everything may turn out well.”
Fr Maccalli, who is ministering in Liberia, continued: “I never expected to get news of this kind about my brother…a great deal of time has passed without knowing anything.”
The video is the first mention of his brother since he was abducted in September 2018 from Bomoanga parish in Niger.
The clergyman hopes that the video, which shows that his brother is still alive, has been sent with a view to eventually negotiating for his release.
“We will now have to wait to see how things turn out,” he said.
“Let us continue to pray and hope that we may finally even be able to meet in person and truly live that joy that we have been hoping for for such a long, long time.”
The brief video, which was sent to the editor of Niger’s Aïr Info newspaper, is date stamped March 24, 2020.
According to Aïr Info, the priest and the other man are being held by Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin’, the Group for Islam and Muslims, a Salafist extremist group founded in Mali in March 2017.
The newspaper reported that the same group held Canadian national Édith Blais and Luca Tacchetto of Italy, who were released safely in December 2018 following 15 months in captivity.
Fr Pierluigi Maccalli, 59, is an Italian missionary with the Society of African Missions (SMA).
The SMA’s Italian Provincial Superior, Fr Ceferino Cainelli, recently said that they were continuing to pray for the priest’s release, noting that his home diocese of Crema gathered every month to petition God for his safe return.
He said: “The pain caused by the absence of Fr Pierluigi, after a year and five months of his kidnapping, is very much felt.”