Luigi Locati (July 23, 1928 – July 14, 2005) was an Italian

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

and

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

. He was shot to death at the pastoral center of

Isiolo Isiolo is a town in Isiolo County, of which it is the capital. It is located in the upper eastern region of Kenya and is geographically considered the center of the country Kenya. It lies 285 kilometers north of the capital Nairobi. The town gr ...

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

. Two priests were arrested in connection to his murder. Peter Malley Guyo Wako was convicted, while Cyril Mukuchia was released due to lack of evidence.

Biography

Born in the village

Vinzaglio Vinzaglio is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Novara in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the ...

in northern

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, he was ordained as priest on June 29, 1952. In the 1960s he came to Kenya as a missionary and worked as a parish priest in Isiolo. On December 15, 1995, he was appointed as

vicar apostolic A vicar (; Latin: ''vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pre ...

of the newly created

Vicariate Apostolic of Isiolo The Diocese of Isiolo is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in the Eastern Province, Kenya. Its episcopal see is in Isiolo, where the St. Eusebius Cathedral is located. History The Apostolic Vicariate of ...

, and

titular bishop A titular bishop in various churches is a bishop who is not in charge of a diocese. By definition, a bishop is an "overseer" of a community of the faithful, so when a priest is ordained a bishop, the tradition of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox an ...

of . In Isiolo he knew

Annalena Tonelli Annalena Tonelli (2 April 1943 – 5 October 2003) was an Italian Catholic lay missionary and social activist. She worked for 33 years in East Africa, where she focused on tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, campaigns for erad ...

, an Italian woman who was also a missionary and was killed in Africa in 2003.

References

Roman Catholic missionaries in Kenya 20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Kenya 21st-century Roman Catholic bishops in Kenya 1928 births 2005 deaths Deaths by firearm in Kenya Italian people murdered abroad People murdered in Kenya Italian Roman Catholic missionaries Italian expatriates in Kenya Italian Roman Catholic bishops in Africa Roman Catholic bishops of Isiolo {{21C-Italy-RC-bishop-stub