(ANSA) - Bangkok, October 7 -The Italian embassy in the Philippines on Wednesday confirmed that seven armed men abducted an Italian restaurateur and former missionary priest Rolando Del Torchio, 56, from his pizzeria and café in the city of Dipolog.
The men reportedly pretended to be clients of his Ur Choice Café before abducting Del Torchio, bundling him onto a motorboat and taking off by sea.
Del Torchio, who first went to the Philippines as a Catholic missionary with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), reportedly left the priesthood in 1996 in disgust over pedophile priests within the Church.
He stayed on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, and went to work for an NGO aiding local farmers before opening a café.
Dipolog is located on Mindanao, where Muslim separatist guerrilla groups have taken up arms against the Catholic majority country. Among them is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which signed a peace deal with the government in March, and its breakaway faction the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, which opposed the agreement. In September, unidentified gunmen abducted Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad and Canadian nationals John Ridsdel and Robert Hall. Filipino Muslims have demonstrated peacefully against the guerrilla violence in Mindanao.
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