Priest arranged his funeral before assassination

Reverend Rafael Reatiga asked his parishioners to pray for him and gave the choirmaster a list of songs for his funeral shortly before he was found shot to death together with another Roman Catholic priest, a Colombian prosecutor said Tuesday.

Authorities initially suspected robbery when Reatiga’s body was found along with that of Rev Richard Piffano, 37, in a car in southern Bogota on Jan 27, 2011.

But this week prosecutor Ana Patricia Larrota said investigators had determined it was suicide by hitmen in the year-old case: the two priests hired gunmen to kill them after Reatiga discovered he had Aids. The priests gave members of a criminal gang the equivalent of $8,500 (€6,500), said the chief investigator of the prosecutor’s office, Maritza Gonzalez, as two of the four alleged assassins appeared before a judge for processing. The two priests had originally planned to throw themselves off a cliff into a canyon north of Bogota but apparently lacked the nerve.