Zimbabwe: elderly Jesuit priest assaulted by police

Police on Monday imprisoned and severely assaulted an 82-year-old Jesuit priest suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Fr Nilus O'Donavan was found wandering in a confused state in the early hours of Monday morning along Harare's Seventh Street, which runs past Robert Mugabe's residence, Catholic church sources report. Fr O'Donovan, an English scholar and former rector of St Ignatius College, a distinguished secondary school run by Jesuits near Harare, lives in retirement at the college. On Sunday, he was given a lift to the Seminary located some three kilometres from the college and was supposed to walk back. He had not arrived by dark, and searches by seminarians and others were in vain. Fr O'Donovan was still missing on Monday morning when a message came that he was in prison in Harare, having been picked up on Seventh Street at 2 am. The priest, described by those who know him as a gentle old man whose mind was failing, was jailed and badly brutalized. He was released at 2 pm on Monday, his face covered with caked blood, and taken to a Jesuit house in Harare. source: ZW News