of course the Jesuits aren't "Catholic" (whatever that is) - they take orders from another group..
Jesuits found dead in Moscow flat
Otto Messmer (left) and Victor Betancourt suffered head injuries
Russian police have launched a murder inquiry after two Jesuit priests were found dead in a Moscow apartment.
The bodies of Otto Messmer, 47, leader of the Russian Jesuit order, and Ecuadorean priest Victor Betancourt, 42, were found on Tuesday night.
The door was found ajar and there were no signs of any theft from the flat in upmarket Petrovka Street.
Police said they had suffered severe head injuries and the bodies had lain undiscovered for at least a day.
The attack on Father Betancourt is believed to have happened at the end of last week as he did not turn up for mass as usual on Sunday, according to Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's chief press spokesman.
He added that Father Messmer had returned to Moscow from Germany on Monday evening and was probably killed shortly afterwards.
'Brutally murdered'
A statement from the official investigators' office said: "We have launched a probe into the murder.
"[The priests] had skull and brain injuries. Forensic experts have established that they died more than a day before."
The secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Russia, Father Igor Kovalevsky, said priests had been murdered in Russia before, but the killing of two priests was "something exceptional".
"They were brutally murdered," Father Kovalevsky told the Associated Press news agency.
The Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is named, owns the apartment where the priests' bodies were found in one of Moscow's most exclusive districts, close to the Kremlin and the Bolshoi Theatre.
The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, Alexy II, has expressed his condolences over the killings.
Several Russian Orthodox priests have been killed across Russia in the past few years. Prosecutors blamed the attacks on criminals looking to steal icons and other church property
BBC NEWS | Europe | Jesuits found dead in Moscow flat
ya right!
Two Catholic priests found dead in Moscow apartment
By Dmitry Solovyov
REUTERS
9:05 a.m. October 29, 2008
MOSCOW – Two Roman Catholic priests were murdered in the apartment where they lived in an upmarket district of Moscow, investigators said on Wednesday.
Victor Betancourt, a Jesuit priest from Ecuador, was killed in the apartment on Saturday and Otto Messmer, a Russian who led the country's Jesuits, was killed there two days later after returning from a foreign trip, their order said in Rome.
'The killing of a person is a grave sin,' said Father Igor Kovalevsky, Secretary General of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Russia.
'The church is praying for those who carried out this terrible crime, so that God gives them the grace to repent.'
The two priests had sustained injuries to their heads and brains, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office said in a statement.
'Investigators have launched a probe into the murder,' it said.
Police discovered the bodies at the apartment – a short walk from the Kremlin and on the same street as the Moscow criminal police headquarters – late on Tuesday.
'The investigation is considering all possible versions of what could have happened, including a domestic crime, because the room bore signs of a party,' the Investigative Committee statement said.
It said the door to the apartment was found open but there were no signs that property had been stolen.
The Jesuit order in Rome said a fellow priest had come to the apartment after becoming worried that he had not heard from the two men. He found their bodies and alerted police.
QUIET BUILDING
The apartment where the priests lived is in one of Moscow's most exclusive districts. A Reuters television crew said the metal door to the Jesuits' third-floor apartment had been sealed by police.
'Two men used to live here, usually it was all quiet,' said an elderly neighbor strolling with her dog outside the building. 'This used to be a quiet house and a calm place.'
Another neighbor, who lives on the floor above the two Jesuits, said he had seen one of the priests but had no other contact with them.
The neighbor said Russian author Anton Chekhov, who died in 1904, had lived in the same apartment.
A statement issued by Jesuit headquarters said Betancourt, 42, had been working at a theological institute in Moscow. It said Messmer, 47, was a Russian citizen of German origin and that two of his brothers are also Jesuits.
'Police investigations have yet to come to any firm conclusions about (the) cause of these violent deaths,' the statement said. (Additional reporting by Alexander Gelogayev and Grigory Alexanian in Moscow, and by Philip Pullella in Rome) (Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Williams)
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figured out why yet?