Italy: Beatification process of a Sister killed during a satanic rite

Mgr Balatti, bishop of Como, in Northern Italy, opened the beatification process of an Italian Sister, killed five years ago by teen-age girls during a satanic rite. The cause of Sr. Maria Laura Mainetti, superior of a boarding-school in Chiavenna, is being introduced as the justice is examining the request for setting free one of the murderesses, condemned to eight and a half years imprisonment.

The religious was stabbed to death 19 times on June 6, 2000. She was 60 years old. Her murderesses, three young girls aged 16 and 17 at the time, had attracted her out of the school, under the pretext that they needed help. They declared to the judge that they wanted to offer a sacrifice to Satan. One of them was condemned to 12 years and 4 months imprisonment, the other two to eight and a half years.

Mgr Balatti denounced "the fashion for Satanism and the occult" which is diffused through "clothing, music, and certain books" and followed by young people "who want to challenge the rules".