Nampula Police have not discovered who murdered Sister Doraci

PORTO ALEGRE, Brasil, February 21, 2005

A year ago Brazilian Deaconess Doraci Edinger was murdered in Nampula, Mozambique but the police Taxi Heathrow Airport in this south-eastern African nation have not yet discovered the authors of the crime.

However, leaders of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB)! , that Doraci belonged to, are convinced that there are sufficient elements to clarify the crime.

The case will be addressed at the upcoming Lutheran World Federation’s (LWF) Executive Committee meeting, to be held in Geneva, Switzerland.

Sister Ruthild Brakemeier, of the Sophie Zink sisterhood, that Doraci Edinger worked with, based in Sao Leopoldo, Brasil, and the IECLB legal advisor Lawyer Milton Laske will travel to Nampula.

 The two IECLB representatives will participate February 24 – 26 in a Church Consortium meeting that supported the mission in Mozambique.

Laske and Brakemeier will also hold official meetings with the authorities who are investigating the murder. 

The Brazilian Church leadership hopes that the investigation will result in the identification of those who carried out the crime and its intellectual authors and that they be processed. 

Fifty-three year old Doraci Edinger was murdered February 21, 2004 in the apartment where she lived in Nampula, 700 kms north of the capital of Mozambique, Maputo. She was assigned to the Lutheran Church of Mozambique by the IECLB. She had been there since July 1998 and was well loved by local congregations. 

In a press note, IECLB president Pastor Walter Altmanm related the murder of Doraci Edinger to that of Sister Dorothy Stang, missionary born in the United States but who was a nationalized Brazilian, that took place February 12 in Anapu, the state of Para.

Both were called Dora and dedicated their lives to serving the poor, he said.

In Altamaria, the Para police arrested landowner Amair Feijole da Cunha, known as Tato, considered the co-author of Stang’s murder.

According to the police, Cunha contracted two gunmen Eduardo and Fogoió. The crime was ordered by landowner Vitalmiro Bastos, of Bida, who is a fugitive.

 Altmann said he hoped that the Brazilian authorities quickly clarify the Anapu crime and present those responsible to justice.

“Indignant and moved by the violence we have, however, the firm conviction that the blood of the Dora sisters was not shed in vain. To the contrary, it is the seed of peace and hope,” affirmed Altmann.