2ND BUST IN CARIBBEAN CHURCH HORROR
Tuesday,January 2,2001

By ANDY SOLTIS

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SISTER THERESA EGAN – Hacked to death

Police in St. Lucia captured a second suspect yesterday in the brutal New Year’s Eve attack on worshippers at a Catholic Mass that left two people dead and dozens injured.
The first suspect, Kim John, 20, told police that “God asked him” to carry out the machete and blowtorch attack because of corruption in the Catholic Church.

A second suspect, Francis Phillip, 34, was found hiding in bushes near where he lives on the Caribbean island.

“The way they’re talking is that the world is going to end and that the time had come for what they had to do,” said Police Inspector Gregory Montoute, who interrogated the men.

Police initially said both the suspects, and as many as three other attackers, may be members of an anti-Catholic cult.

But yesterday, investigators said they don’t believe the men belong to any organized group.

“No one gave any indication that they belonged to a sect with extremist beliefs or violent tenets,” Montoute said.

The suspects, both Rastafarians, said they are “prophets” sent by Haile Selassie, the late Ethiopian leader revered by Rastafarians.

But St. Lucia’s Rastafarian leaders denounced the attack yesterday.

Witnesses said more than 400 people were attending Mass at the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in the capital of Castries when the attackers began dousing churchgoers with gasoline, setting them afire and slashing at them.

The attack killed a nun, Sister Theresa Egan, 72, of the Order of St. Joseph of Cluny, and an unidentified male worshipper.

“The evidence of the monstrosity of the act was spread out inside the church,” said St. Lucia’s prime minister, Kenny Anthony.

“There was blood in the spots where persons were hacked, burnt Bibles, a desecrated altar and other church furniture either burnt or upended in the melee.”

Another 13 people were treated for cutlass wounds and burns, and others were injured in a stampede to escape the flames and the attackers.

The most seriously injured survivor appeared to be the Rev. Charles Gaillard, who was in critical condition with facial burns. He was flown to Martinique for treatment yesterday.
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