By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent BosNewsLife with BosNewsLife Southeast Asia Correspondent Santosh Digal in Manila

In Italy, Bossi's family was reportedly sitting down for dinner at his mother's birth day late Thursday, July 19, when they received a call that he was freed.

 

Bossi, 58 of Milan, was recovered by police after his captors left him on a road in Karumatan, a Muslim town in Lanao del Norte Province, in the southern Philippines. No group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping which began June 10.

 

However the priest, healthy but clearly shaken, told reporters his kidnappers identified themselves as members of Abu Sayyaf, a Filipino terrorist group.

 

"From the beginning they told me they were Abu Sayyaf. [They said] the only reason [why they kidnapped me] was because I am a priest [and a missionary] to have some revenge, " said Bossi, who belongs to the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, in Zamboanga Sibugay Province.

 

"ROUGUE ELEMENTS"

Officials claimed however that  he was kidnapped by "rogue elements" of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the main Islamic separatist group. Since 1997, the government and the MILF have been talking to end nearly 40 years of rebellion that has killed more than 120,000 people and displaced two million. The battles has been slowing down growth in resource-rich Mindanao, analysts say.

 

Efforts by the Philippines' government to free the priest failed when fourteen soldiers were killed, an incident he said weighed on his heart. "They told me about the accident. I felt so sorry. In a way I feel myself responsible for their death," he said in comments aired on Vatican Radio.      

 

Bossi said it never occurred to him that he would be killed, he braced himself for a longer ordeal. He noted that two other priests from his group - Giuseppe Pierantoni, kidnapped in 2001, and Luciano Benedetti, kidnapped in 1998 - were held much longer.

 

On Friday, July 20, Bossi said he would go back to Payao, a fishing town in Zamboanga Sibugay where he was based. "I have to go back to Payao," he added. "My heart is still in Payao." Bossi, who has been in the Philippines for nearly 30 years, said it was important to go back to his perish which is made up of mainly impoverished people.

 

IN "GOOD HANDS"

"Father Bossi is now in good hands," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a Catholic herself, said Friday, July 20. "We pray that he could soon gather his strength and recover from his ordeal."

 

Yet the kidnapping underscored that "Foreign missionaries, are giving a great service to the people especially in Mindanao amid sacrifices and dangers," said the  Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

 

However, "We welcome with joy and gratitude the release of the missionary, Fr Giancarlo Bossi, by his abductors,” added CBCP President Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo in comments monitored by BosNewsLife. 

 

Zamboanga Archbishop Romulo Valles thanked the faithful who prayed for the safe release of Bossi, after over a month in captivity. "They have accomplished a truly arduous mission," he said in a statement published on the CBCP website.