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  Former Chicago Priest Slain in Philippines
Stabbed to Death at Home in Apparent Robbery Attempt

By Lucio Guerrero
Chicago Sun-Times
December 5, 2003

A former Chicago priest who was living in his native Philippines was found stabbed to death in his suburban Manila home earlier this week, police said.

The Rev. Albert Tanghal Rimando, 50, a parish priest of the Malate Catholic Church in Manila, was lying in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds in his home in Quezon City when his cousin found him late Tuesday, police said.

Police officer Rogelio Basbas said the case was initially being treated as robbery with homicide.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, police said Rimando was killed Tuesday morning after robbers accosted him coming out of the bathroom. His naked body was found with several stab wounds in the chest and elsewhere.

Police said the home was burglarized three weeks earlier and that robbery was the motive for this crime. According to the paper, the priest's relatives are refusing to cooperate with police or talk with the media.

Rimando was ordained in 1991 and began serving as a priest in the Chicago archdiocese at Our Lady of Ransom in Niles and then at St. Leonard in Berwyn. His last assignment here was at St. Priscilla on the Northwest Side.

A spokesman for the archdiocese said they learned about the murder Thursday.

Jim Dwyer said the archdiocese lost touch with the priest in autumn 1999, when he requested a leave of absence from his parish. He was granted the leave and was scheduled to return to the parish in early 2000, but he never showed.

"He was a nice man," said Fred Spitzzeri, a deacon at St. Priscilla, who worked alongside Rimando on the altar.

Spitzzeri said the priest was especially close to the Philippine community in Chicago. Although there wasn't a large Philippine population near the church, Filipinos from all over Chicago would visit the parish because of Rimando, Spitzzeri said.

 
 

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