From the News Services...
Moscow - Two Jesuit priests died of knife wounds in Moscow, Russian news agencies said
Wednesday. Father Igor Kovalevsky, the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, said the priests bodies were found in their central Moscow apartment late Tuesday.
Kovalevsky called the incident a "brutal murder."
Police at the scene said the two men had died of blows to the head and knife wounds. Authorities said the motive for the killing was unknown.
News agency Ria-Novosti named the victims as Russian national Otto Messmer, 46, and South American priest Victor Betancourt, 42.
From the General Curia of the Society of Jesus...
On Saturday 25 October, Father Victor Betancourt, an Ecuadorian Jesuit working in the St. Thomas Philosophical, Theological and Historical Institute in Moscow, was killed in his home. Two days later, after returning from a trip abroad, Father Otto Messmer, Superior of the Russian Region, was also killed in the same place. On Tuesday 28 October, alarmed by the fact that he hadn't heard from the two men, a fellow Jesuit who lives in another community went to visit them at home. On finding the dead bodies, he immediately contacted the police.
The police investigations have yet to come to any firm conclusions about cause of these violent deaths.
Father Otto Messmer, son of a profoundly Catholic family of German origin and a Russian citizen, was born on 14 July 1961 in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. He entered into the Society of Jesus on 1 September 1982 in Vilnius and was ordained a priest on 29 May 1988 in Riga. He took his final vows in Novosibirsk on 7 October 2001 and was appointed Superior of the Independent Region of Russia of the Society of Jesus on 13 October 2002. Two of his brothers are Jesuits: Monsignor Nikolaus, Bishop of the Kyrgyzstani city of Bishkek, and Hieronymus, from the German Province.
Father Victor Betancourt was born on 7 July 1966 in Guayaquil, Ecuador. He entered into the Society of Jesus on 14 September 1984 in Quito and was ordained a priest in the same city on 31 July 1997. He undertook his Jesuit training in Argentina, Ecuador, Germany and Italy. In 2004, he defended his doctoral thesis in Theology in the city of Rome. Since 2001, he had been responsible for those considering a vocation as Jesuits and at the time of his death he was a theology professor in the St. Thomas Philosophical, Theological and Historical Institute in Moscow
May their memory be eternal!
Wednesday. Father Igor Kovalevsky, the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, said the priests bodies were found in their central Moscow apartment late Tuesday. 
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