Abu Sayyaf Group releases ex-Italian priest

ZAMBOANGA CITY — After spending six months in the forest of Sulu, the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) finally decided to release former Catholic priest turned businessman Rolando Del Torchio, an Italian national in an undisclosed place and date in Sulu province.

Sulu Provincial Police Office (PPO) Director Sr. Supt Wilfredo Cayat said that the recovering team composed of police and military personnel in Sulu recovered Del Torchio at the Jolo port in Sulu about 5:30 pm on Friday (April 8, 2016), onboard commercial ferry M/L KC Beatrice bound for Zamboanga City.

Del Torchio, 57, was kidnapped by the ASG, while attending his Pizza Pie House in the village of Miputak in Dipolog City on October 7, 2015.

The recovery team immediately took custody of Del Torchio and brought him to the Armed Forces of the Philippines Trauma Center in Jolo, where a military physician took care of him.

ASG normally beheads their captives if the family of the victim failed to give in to their ransom demand.

Del Torchio, according to reports, was a former missionary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. He was born in Angera in northern Italy and was ordained as a priest in 1984.

In 1988, Mr. Del Torchio was sent to a Muslim-dominated Sibuco town in Zamboanga del Norte and he stayed in Sibuco until 1996 before he decided to move to Dipolog City to work with a non-governmental organization that helped farmers.