Gunman Kills 2 Monks At Catholic Abbey
A 71-year-old man opened fire at a Roman Catholic abbey on Monday, killing two monks and wounding two other people before taking his own life, authorities said.
The body of the gunman was found in the chapel at the Conception Abbey, said a Missouri State Highway Patrol official. The official said the man shot himself to death after shooting the others. Two weapons, an AK-47 and a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle, were found nearby. The abbey is a Benedictine monastery and seminary.
The victims were identified as the Rev. Philip Schuster, 85, and Brother Damian Larson, 64. Schuster was a greeter at the monastery's front door; Larson worked as a groundskeeper. Rev. Gregory Polan, abbot of the abbey, said both had been at the Abbey for more than 30 years.
The Rev. Kenneth Reichert, 68, an assistant to the abbot, was shot in the stomach and was in surgery. The Rev. Norbert Schappler, 73, was listed in stable condition; it wasn't immediately clear how he was wounded. Schappler oversees the dining room and also works as director at the printing house.
Authorities were seeking a motive, and church officials said they did not know whether the attack may have been linked to the sex abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church in recent months.
Polan said he was shown a driver's license of the shooter and that "we have no sense of who this man is."
The gunman, whose name was not released, was from Kearney, 70 miles south of the abbey. The names of the two monks — a 64-year-old and a man in his 80s — also were not immediately released.
Polan said monks heard noises about 8:40 a.m. and barred themselves in their rooms when they realized a gun was being fired.
"There's a lot of shock and sadness," Polan said. "These were two monks whose lives have been lived here in a generous, gracious spirit."
Ronda Strueby, 39, a supervisor in the packaging department of the Abbey's printing house, said all employees were evacuated at about 9 a.m.
The abbey is a sprawling complex. The seminary college on campus is the largest priestly training center in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The complex also has a basilica.
The college lists a staff of 19 priests, eight brothers, one sister, six lay professors and student body of 97. The abbey is located 80 miles north of Kansas City.
With the church embroiled in scandal, two U.S.-based priests have committed suicide since April and one was shot by a man who said he had been sexually abused by the priest.
The Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, led by Bishop Raymond J. Boland, said in March that it had paid $25,000 in 1996 to settle a sexual abuse claim against a priest. The alleged abuse occurred in the early 1980s, when the accuser was in grade school, said the Rev. Patrick Rush, vicar general of the diocese. By the time the allegations were made in 1995, the priest had left the priesthood and was dead. Rush would not identify the accuser or the priest, or say how the priest died.