Fr Emmanuel Runditse, a native of Burundi, will be the new parish priest of the communities of San Giuseppe, San Rocco, Santa Maria Vergine della Salute and San Nicolò al Tempio ossuary in Udine from the second half of November.
Not only that, he will become coordinator of the pastoral collaboration of south-west Udine, which in addition to the four communities around viale Venezia, includes the parishes of Sant’Osvaldo and San Paolo.
Fr Runditse was ordained a priest in 1988. After carrying out the first years of priestly ministry in his native land, he arrived in Friuli in 1995, first serving as a collaborator in Basiliano, then in Vidulis and Dignano. In 2014 he took over the leadership of the parishes of Majano, Comerzo, San Tomaso and Susans, communities to which the nearby Farla was added in 2016.
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Just as he was carrying out his work in the Friuli Hills, Don Emmanuel ended up at the center of an investigation for noise pollution due to the ringing of the bells. For some residents the noise coming from the bell tower was too intense, and the parish priest was not only denounced, but was also forced to pay a fine of over two thousand euros plus another thousand for the cost of the services provided by the ARPA (which carried out the measurements decibels).
In the end, Fr Runditse was acquitted receiving the solidarity of a large part of the community of faithful, who appeared en masse in court during the trial against him, in July 2019. A few months later, in October, here is the acquittal with full formula , putting an end to a story that had ended up dividing the country, raising a real fuss with echoes at the national level.
In just over a month, Fr Emmanuel Runditse will become the pastoral point of reference for the four parishes in Udine. It has not yet been decided who will replace him in the five churches of the pastoral care of Majano.
A priest, Runditse, who in the years in which he worked in his country, Burundi, suffered an attack by an armed gang that killed 122. It was his turn to bury all the victims. A story that marked him indelibly. –