Sun News Services
TECGUCIGALPA, Honduras--A Roman Catholic bishop in Honduras says he believes Nicaraguan rebels killed Rev. William Arsenault, a Canadian priest who had been working in Honduras for more than 20 years.
Most Rev. Luis Santos Villeda, bishop of Santa Rosa de Copan in western Honduras, said Arsenault, from Bonaventure, Que., "was not killed by Hondurans, he was killed by Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries who also have spread death to many of our countrymen."
Honduran police detained two Nicaraguan men Monday in the investigation of Arsenault's slaying on March 20.
A police source said Tuesday: "The investigation is continuing, but we are certain that the criminals are of Nicaraguan nationality...and they already are in our custody."
Arsenault, 54, was beaten and shot by two men who found him at a training centre about 30 kilometres east of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where he was building a house for mentally and physically disabled children.
Police said the bullets were from a 9-mm. pistol, commonly used by the army and police in Honduras.
A Quebec coroner has refused to confirm or deny a radio news report that an autopsy on Arsenault's body indicated he was shot in the back. Coroner Louise Nolet said in Quebec City that pathologist Georges Miller performed the autopsy on Arsenault's body early Tuesday, but that under the law the results cannot yet be made public.
About 1,500 friends, family and clergy packed a Roman Catholic church in the Gaspe community of Bonaventure on Wednesday for Arsenault's funeral.
The newspaper La Tribuna quoted Santos Villeda as saying in a weekend homily that "the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries are responsible for this treacherous crime, but we also are responsible for having tolerated those people."
The bishop was also quoted as referring to the presence of Nicaraguan Contra rebels in Honduras and saying: "Our people sleep and at times pretend to be unaware."
"We have tolerated these people on our territory," La Tribuna quoted him as saying. "Father Arsenault is one of those killed by these people in Honduras."
Arsenault's body was kept at several Tegucigalpa churches for four nights before being returned earlier this week to Bonaventure.
(text of March 27, 1986 Vancouver Sun article)