One Year On, Missionary Priest Abducted in Niger Still Missing, Prayerful Concerns

The SMA website has a poster created “to remember the year that has passed since Luigi was taken.”

“We asked our readers to join the Society of African Missions in marking this sad occasion with sincere prayers for his wellbeing and safe return,” the editor has explained.

Fr. Maccalli had been a missionary in Ivory Coast for several years before being commissioned to the diocese of Niamey at Bomoanga parish, which has been described as “an isolated and neglected area because of the lack of roads, communications, and infrastructure.”

According to the testimony of Fr. Maccalli’s Indian confrere who was with him on the night of his abduction and who managed to escape, the armed abductors took away his (Fr. Maccalli’s) computer and phone.

Named after the Niger River, the Republic of the Niger is bordered by a number of countries, including Libya to the northeast, Chad to the East, Benin to the southwest, Nigeria to the South, Algeria to northwest, and Mali and Burkina Faso to the West.

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Weeks into his abduction, there were reports that Fr. Maccalli might have been taken beyond Niger’s border, probably into Burkina Faso where “there is, in fact, a vast forest in which the jihadist militants have their bases.”